
Class tfD£67£. 

Book J-L^>_ 

Copyright W 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 







Price §o Cents, | 

I Aggressive I 

o 

I QoMMON-SENSE, 



OE 



Rights of American Wotkezs 

In the Dawn of t/p Twentieth Centuty. 



44 TJfe birtti of a new idea fyxs ever terrified the mien who fytve disovet- 
ed in it an opposition to their ptinciples and position. These have ever 
sought to put it down by cunning and deception ; they conceal their hate 
under the profession of love ; like Judas, they kiss to bettay. ' ' 



PUBLISHED BY 

E. E. HARDING, 

TRACY, MINNESOTA. 



>»»»»OO»»»»» » »»»»O»»»+»+»»»»»»»»»»»»+»O+»0»< 



AGGRESSIVE 

Common Sense 



3 f 



Concerning Mutual Interests 
and Relations of American 



Farmers and Wage-earners 



vs 



Private Monopoly and Trusts, 

Rights of working people 

In The Dawn of The Twentieth Century. 



/BY 

E. E. HARDING. 



THE LIBRARY OF 

CONGRESS, 
Two Cores Received 

AUG. 10 1901 

Copyright entry 
TKa^ a% f9of 

CLASSCUXXc N». 

/O ti>i> 

COPY B. 



Y 



° 






^ 



\o 



Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1901, by Eugene E/ 
Harding, in the office of the Librarian of Congress, 
at Washington. 



AUTHORS PREFACE. 



Undoubtedly, true classic students and writers will place 
no less value upon the merits of this work, because of the 
untutored and unpolished diction, and other people whose 
purpose is to figure out the truth, will hardly criticise the 
style of expression. 

4 'Let us continually bear in mind that prejudice is a 
sign of weakness," and that, "If you know but one side of a 
question, then you are only half posted. Get all the facts 
obtainable, then draw your own conclusions. " 

Again, "Read, not to contradict and confute, neither to 
believe and take for granted, but to weigh and consider. " 

It is without claiming full originality for the materials 
in this pamphlet, that I submit the same to the public. And 
I trust to the public intelligence for an eventual vindifica- 
tion of this work and also of my claim to having avoided all 
unwarranted assertions and catch-phase sophistries and 
diligently sought to present, in lecture form, a fair and im- 
partial array of plain facts in support of the rights of 
American workers. 

E. E. Harding. 



CHAPTER I. 

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen : 

"Perhaps the sentiments" of the proposed evening's 
discourse" are not yet sufficiently fashionable to secure 
them general favor. " It has been truly said that, " A habit 
of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appear- 
ance of being right, and raises at first a formidable out- 
cry in defense of custom ; " notwithstanding the unfair, dis- 
honest and unjust conditions which may attend such custom. 

"It is easy to mistake a custom, " or habit, "for nature 
and inherited prejudice for moralty. " 

" If we were to eradicate from our beliefs, all the errors 
that inheritance and environments have given us, it would 
be hard to guess how many of our existing dogmas would 
still remain. " 



6. 

We know that in the past, custom, or established senti- 
ment, has decreed many things good and many things bad,, 
according to the whim of time and place. We have been 
taught how old-time custom upheld and sustained the once 
so-called "Devine Rights of Kings. " 

Even not much prior to the American revolution, the 
idea that the common people had certain inherent rights, to 
obtain which a resort to many bloody conflicts would be 
justifiable, was confined to a few advanced thinkers. 

The then supposed supreme duty of the people was to 
submit their temporal welfare to the exactions of the king 
and their spiritual welfare to the caprices of the priest, pope 
and bishop. But the tyranny of such superstitions is largely 
becoming, we hope, a thing of the past. 

Again, we have been taught, and in a sense quite to our 
humiliation, how our forefathers' religion was fraught with 
the hideous doctrines of witchcraft ; and scarcely more than 
a generation ago, we — yes, we Ame'rican people as a nation 
fostered and protected as a divine and religious proposition 
that institution which was known as chattel slavery — the* 
buying and selling of our fellow men ! 

Now, then, ladies and gentlemen, I claim, and I am sure 
you will all agree with me, that any habitual abuse of power 
and authority, in whatever manner, is an urgent occasion 
for calling the right of them in question. 

And my friends, as an organized privileged class are- 
with a hitherto unprecidented haste and by unjust and dis- 
honest means of pools, trusts or combines and other monoply, 
here in America, gaining possession and control of great' 
and unwarranted aggregations of wealth, together with the 
unfair and unjust commercial, industrial, and also political 
power which attends the possession of such vast wealth; 
and as the great and good common people of this country 



are grievously oppressed by such combinations any monopo- 
ly, "it is their right, it is their duty, " to reject any and 
every usurpation. 

Why, my fellow citizens — you workers, you wage-labcr- 
ers and you farmers, you who comprise the only honestly 
useful intellectual and manual toilers of field, factory and 
office — you, my friends, are the producers, the. real and 
ONLY producers of food, clothing and shelter. Barring the 
bounties of nature, you are the creators of all capi- 
tal, YOU ARE THE PRODUCERS OF ALL WEALTH ! YOU 
HOUSE, CLOTHE AND FEED EVERYBODY ! 

Without your patient industry and enterprise, the priv- 
ileged classes would cease to play with games they are now 
playing. 

It is not only yourselves that you feed, but you also feed 
an indolent privileged class. And while in many cases, 
perhaps, it is not any too good that you clothe yourselves, 
you clothe the privileged drones very nicely. 

While you may house yourselves in humble cottages, 

you provide the millionaire a mansion, and you furnish all 

the servants and luxuries and fineries for the millionaires. 

Yes, your labor with the aid of nature furnishes 

THEM ALL ! 

And you people who with nature's aid are the producers 
of all wealth and capital, should unite for the purpose of 
gaining control of the powers of goverment, which powers 
are now controlled by the wealthier, or privileged class of 
capitalists, the capitalists who are in possession and control 
of such public utilities as the great coal and iron mines, the 
oil wells, railways, telegraphs, manufacturing plants, etc. 

This capitalist class have also largely under their con- 
trol the American press and other means of communicating 
ideas — many of the most talented orators and writers, whose 



services and influence can very easily be and generally are 
enlisted on the side of the men with million-dollar 
pocket books ; and they are usingsuch means to mislead the 
producers, the creators of wealth, that they (the greater 
capitalists ) may appropriate to their own use, to their own 
benefit, or enjoyment, the cream of the wages and products 
of the farmers and wage-workers. 

Moreover, these capitalists seek to keep the great body 
of American workers — these capitalists seek quite effect- 
ually to keep the masses divided, estranged, and fighting 
each other. Very able and influential newspapers and 
orators may tell the farmers that the laborer who strikes for 
higer wages for the purpose of freeing himself from the ban 
of monopoly or the extortions of the trust, is seeking to rob 
the farmer. Again they tell the city worker, factory hand, 
miner, etc., that the "Alliance, " or "Grange " farmer is in 
league with the capitalist to enslave labor. 

Some of the city wage-earners are even led to believe 
that many of our western or southern farmers are becoming 
bloated millionaires. 

When the common people, the masses, are thus de- 
ceived and therefore prone to fight each other, the capitalists 
can — materially speaking — continue to pick the pockets of 
both you farmers and us wage-workers. 

Unless we all fight together and against the common 
enemy, we shall continue as the servants of these strong 
capitalists — the privileged millionaire capitalists who, be- 
ing very much in control of our government, and quite 
naturally looking to their own interests, are strongly induced 
to manipulate legislation in their OWN interest, for their 
OWN benefit and protection and at OUR expense. 

Their favorite legislation quite naturally aims toward 
" a feast for them and a famine for us. " Yet they rarely 



bear their share of the burdens of government. That is, 
they very rarely pay their just proportion of taxes ; but, on 
the contrary, they may tax us at their own pleasure, so long 
as they hold the reins of government. 

Now, then, my friends, we all understand that well. 
or JUSTLY paid factory workmen, mill hands, coal miners, 
etc., make of such men liberal purchasers and consumers of 
the farmers' surplus products. And this means better 
prices and more prosperous farmers, which farmers in turn, 
will and must be more liberal purchasers of the city work- 
men's and merchants' goods. 

In short, the interests of the wage-earner and the inter- 
ests of the farmer, who I believe generally is himself a use- 
ful worker — I say, my friends, that from an economical and 
political standpoint, the interests of these two men are 
identical. 

We know it is an old and time-honored adage, that, 
" When labor is well-fed the farmer prospers. " And so it is 
so. Farming isa success only as labor succeeds. 

But with the average millionaire capitalists, with the 
great railway kings and trust magnates, it is a very different 
question. 

Such fellows, to be sure, do a great deal of shrewd, cun- 
ning, hard-headed scheming and conniving. But as a rule 
they perform not so much honestly useful and productive 
labor, either mental or manual. 

For the most part, their toil, if we may so call it, is of 
the dishonest (though law-sanctioned) non-productive kind, 
which, instead of being useful and beneficial, is obstructive, 
detrimental and injurious to the general welfare of society. 

Speaking from the standpoint of honesty, integrity and 
usefulness, the average millionaire toils not. 

Yet thev secure to themselves most bountiful harvests, 



10. 

by means of the results of poorly fed and miserably clad 
labor and by the various indirect means of trust and mono- 
poly power for fleecing the farmer. 

The dangerous classes of this country are not, as the 
t¥ust-and-monopoly-influenced-press would lead us to believe, 
the poor igornant people who have been placed in their de- 
pendent, humiliating, and therefore degenerating and de- 
basing circumstances, largely as a result of the doings of 
monopolies and trusts ! 

The real dangerous classes are the people who institute 
combines, etc., for the purpose of dishonestly raising the 
prices of the necessaries of life — food, clothing, shelter, etc. : 
and lock the workmen out of employment, keep them poor 
and dependent : and then subsidize newspapers, colleges, 
churches, orators, writers, and political parties and their 
leaders, to condone their wholesale law-sanctioned robbery 
and advertise them as philanthropists. 

This thing of exacting from the masses millions of 
wealth, as the cunning monopoly kings are doing, and then 
returning as a present ( ? ) to the public a small fraction of 
the same, becomes, when the mask is removed, a rather new 
and inconsistent kind of charity. 

It is too much like stealing a man's best suit of clothes, 
in the night when he is asleep, and then going back in the 
daylight to present him with a new necktie, new collar and 
cuffs, or something of that kind. 

Surely, all rational and fair-minded people must con- 
clude, upon deliberate investigation, that when a man 
secures possession of millions, he is acquiring what does not 
and cannot really belong to him. He is acquiring possession 
of wealth which in truth belongs to other people, wealth 
which is the fruits of other people's toil. 

And it cannot be the ultimate aim of honest thrift, nor 



11. 

in keeping with duty, honesty, or good citizenship, for a 
man to strive through means of cunningly devised methods 
to acquire and retain possession of anything like a million. 

Suppose there were one hundred men on an isolated 
island, and every one diligently at work, each producing 
one thousand dollars worth of wealth per year over and above 
enough to supply his wants in the meantime. Under such 
conditions every man could save one thousand dollars per 
year, and, at the end of ten years the one hundred men 
would each have laid up for a "rainy day, " or old age, ten 
thousand dollars : or the one hundred men would possess in 
the aggregate a million dollars worth of wealth, And then 
there would be no millionaire and no paupers. 

In order for one of them to become a millionaire in the 
ten years, he must devise some crafty means of appropriating 
for himself all the hard-earned savings of all the other 
ninety-nine men — leaving ninety-nine paupers to attend up- 
on and serve the one famous and honorable ( ? ) millionaire. 

Such a wise man COULD well afford to donate a share 
-of his great possessions to benevolent and charitable institu- 
tions which might falsely advertise him as a public bene- 
factor. ■ 

It requires not so very much figuring and calculating to 
show how a great many of the workers are cheated, every 
time any one man acquires a million. 

And it is not the part of good government to even toler- 
ate, much less to foster and protect, any one man in the 
possession of a million of wealth — such vast wealth ! which, 
as can be easily demonstrated, he cannot truly own, but 
which he has, by means of his cunning schemes, simply con- 
fiscated from the people whose hard-earned and too patient 
labor produced the same, and who are therefore its real 
honest owners. 



12. 

So far as government aids and protects the immensely 
rich, in plundering and despoiling the masses by means of 
combines and monopolies, in that respect it is the rule of 
tyranny ; and the millionaire manipulator of the monopoly 
or trust, is one of the tyrants. 

The usual methods of hoarding millions and adding to* 
the same are but avaircious methods of the modern tyrant. 
As we have seen, all is simply taking and withholding wealth 
from its real owners, from the people by whose labor it was 
produced ! 

Owing to the changed conditions : i. e., the various in- 
dustries of the country being centralized and monopolized 
into fewer and fewer hands, many men who might very 
easily have succeeded a few years ago, cannot succeed in 
business today. 

When a government condones and defends such condi- 
tions in which a few millionaire tyrants pursue their com- 
mon practice of crushing out business competitors, monopol- 
izing the greater, or leading opportunities in business, and 
depriving the workers either directly or indirectly of a large 
precentage of the fruits of their toil ; that government is 
thereby crippling, discouraging and crushing out that gen- 
eral thrift, ambition and industry, together with the attend- 
ant love of country, or patriotism, upon which the very safe- 
ty and progress of the country depend. 

And to the extent that either the acts or the omissions- 
of the government tend toward discouraging the ambition 
and thrift of the common useful toilers, to that extent the 
government becomes responsible for the resulting wide- 
spread discontent, indolence, and vagrancy which must al- 
most necessarily be quite frequently associated with strikes, 
mob-law and violence. 

t In looking over the history of past nations, we learn that, 



13. 

as the wealth of a nation became centralized into fewer and 
fewer hands, there were fewer and fewer good citizens, and 
more and more of the marauding type. 

Not possessing any wealth, and there being no fair and 
just privileges or opportunities to labor and produce an hon- 
orable livlihood, under protection of the government, the 
masses gradually lost all respect for the laws of their coun- 
try, and, as a consequence of such conditions, patriotism be- 
came, first a dying principle, and at last an unknown 
principle. 

Thus with the centralization of wealth, and 
the consequent decline of patriotism and good 
citizenship, government degenerated into a state 

OF CHOAS. 

For the past fifty years, the United States has followed 
rapidly in the footsteps of fallen nations. 

In 1850 what we call " capitalists " controlled three- 
eights of the nation's wealth. 

In 1870 they controlled five-eights ; and in 1890 two per 
cent of the population controlled seven-tenths of the nation's 
entire wealth. Chancy Depew says that fifty men control 
the finances of this country and dictate its legislation. 

If this be true, what of American liberty? 



14. 



CHAPTER IL 

Every man has the inherent and inalinable right to work 
under conditions and opportunities equal to those of every 
other man, but he never can exercise and enjoy the same so 
long as great corporations possess and control the opportuni- 
ties. 

Many writers of today declare that the state of the 
heathen savage is happier than that of his so-called ''civil- 
ized brother. " 

They claim that while the savage has fewer things, few- 
er comforts, he also has fewer wants and in his primitive 
state he is free, as compared with his more burdened, care- 
worn and therefore distressed brother. 

The modern civilized man finds his wants and needs 
ever increasing, while the growing power of the privileged 
classes is making it more and more difficult for him to sup- 
ply those wants. 

With only a moderate amount of toil the people of today 
could, under just conditions, produce all that they actually 
need to maintain themselves in health, comfort and happi- 
ness ; and yet, among the very savages there are not so very 
many, if any, more dying with maladies resulting from 
cold and hunger than there are among the poor people of 



15. 

such large cities as New York, Chicago and San Francisco. 

And one faction tells us that the unfortunate circum- 
stances of these poor people is caused, in many instances, by 
"over-production," while there is another school which is 
pronouncing it " underconsumption. " 

Do people at times work so hard and faithful and pro- 
duce so much that they must go hungry as a consequence ? 

If they had labored less arid produced less, would they 
then have a plenty ; or do people die of hunger because they 
will not eat? 

Wild beasts succeed, you know, in securing the food and 
•shelter they need unless they come in conflict with other 
and stronger beasts; or when their numbers become too 
great for the resources from which they gain their living. 

Is this the trouble with men ? Are there too many of 
us? 

Hardly any thoughtful person will say this is the case in 
the United States, a country which Talmage says is capable 
of supplying a plenty for twelve hundred million people, 
nearly twenty times our present population. 

Surely, with all the wonderful machines and advant- 
ages of co-operation in work ; with the railroads, steamships 
and telegraphs, to bring persons and things together from 
all parts of the earth ; we should easily produce many times 
more than our forefathers could. So we should have and 
enjoy many times more of the comforts and good things of 
life ; and NO one should lack for anything except those 
people — among whom are to be found not a few millionaires 
— who will not do honest, useful work. 

"He that will not willingly work, and only he, should 
not eat." 

Turn to almost any article you will, made about a cent- 
ury ago for the comfort of man, and you find that, with the 



16. 

aid of the labor-saving machinery available to-day, dozens 
of the same article are now made with no more effort. 

Evidently a great many people never stop to think about 
this matter, and so they little realize how much — under 
practical justice — should be done with the aid of the great 
inventions that were brought to light by nineteenth century 
genius. 

The application of steam power had a wonderful influ- 
ence on the commercial and industrial life. It was the fore- 
runner of a vast number of labor-saving inventions, which 
have revolutionized human labor and very radically changed 
the conditions of the human race, as regards the relations 
of employee and employer. 

The nineteenth century was a great era for solving the 
problem of producing wealth. And we now, no longer look 
to mere muscular power to cultivate the ground, harvest the 
crops with sides, and make shoes, clothes, boards, nails and 
bricks by hand. 

The individual hoe-maker has disappeared. The indi- 
vidual wagon-maker has disappeared. And so has the in- 
dividual watch-maker disappeared. In fact individualism in 
production has almost entirely disappeared ; the workers 
now-a-days being only parts of machines, and under ex- 
isting conditions, when the work is done they have nothing 
further to do — as they once did — with the products or the 
prices of the same. 

These changed conditions resulting, from the influence 
of invention, have brought us to new and seemingly per- 
plexing problems, concerning which there are some very, 
conflicting views. 

As early as 1888 Dr. Talmage said in his "Pathway of 
Life " on page 113: "God will halt the inventive faculty, 
which by producing a machine that will do the work of ten 



17. 

or twenty or one hundred men and women, will leave that 
number of people without work. I hope there will not be 
invented another sewing- machine, or reaping machine, or 
corn thresher, or any other new machine for the next five 
hundred years. We want no more wooden hands, and iron 
hands, and electric hands substituted for men and women, 
who would otherwise do the work and get the pay and earn 
the livelihood." 

Notwithstanding the great popularity of Mr. Talmage, 
I venture the assertion that his views will never meet with 
general favor. 

However, the great preacher's opinion concerning this 
very serious economic question, is no more inconsistent and 
ridiculous than the "over-production "and "under-consump* 
tion " doctrines of some of the great (?) politicians. 



18. 



CHAPTER III. 

Now, then, my friends, some people tell us, with reason f 
that in all history down to the nineteenth century, the prob~ 
lem of poverty was, primarily, a problem of production. 

And while it was rather difficult for our forefathers to 
make by hand enough things to supply their wants ; they 
scarcely ever had any more miserable poverty to deal with 
than we now have in this day of labor-saving machinery. 
While we have learned how to produce a plenty very easily; 
some people would, so it seems, have us believe that we 
have not yet learned how not to produce too much — how to 
escape the so-called "over-production." 

As it seems to me, my friends, our unscientific system of 
distribution is the source of our difficulties. While we have 
mastered nature, harnessed steam, electricity, the cataracts 
and the winds, and thus acquired great skill in the art of 
producing ; we have not made corresponding improvements 
in our system of distributing wealth. 

We all know, as a matter-of-fact, that every few years 
there comes a time when a very large proportion of our in- 
dustries are idle, when mills and factories by the hundreds 
are at a standstill ; and while the store-houses and graneries 
are full thousands of workmen and their families are more 



19. 

or less destitute, millions of people have too little food, 
clothing and shelter, to keep them reasonably comfortable 
and in good health. 

Can this all be because there are too many mills, fac- 
tories, mines, etc., and also because there are tco many farms, 
farmers and wage-workers ? 

Or is it more because the workingman's wage is not 
sufficient to enable him to purchase, consume, and enjoy, the 
. equivalent of the fruits of his toil ? 

And how can the workingman secure the fullest wage 
to which he is justly entitled ? 

Surely, neither the wage-earner nor the farmer can get 
his just deserts, so long as private corporations and trusts 
monopolize and control the great manufacturing and trans- 
portation industries. They cannot get their rights so long 
as the farmer has nothing to say concerning the prices he 
shall receive for his produce : nor so long as the wage-earner 
has no voice in fixing the price of his labor: while on the 
other hand, the trusts and monopolies charge the farmers 
and wage-workers as much as they please. 

Under the existing system, the comparatively few 
possessors of the great machine-power shops, factories, 
mills, mines, transportation lines, etc., seemingly compel 
the wage-earners to work for them, and the farmers to sell 
to them their produce at such beggarly figures as they, the 
monopoly masters, see fit to dictate. 

And, on the other hand, they generally charge the 
farmers and other workers the highest prices that it seems 
possible for them to pay. 

At any rate, we know that the people who are doing the 
necessary and hard work have, as a rule, the fewest com- 
forts. 

In the great cities a large per cent of them cannot live 



20. 

on the wages they receive, and must look to charity to keep 
them from starving and freezing. And. at last when they 
depart this life, the public authorities must bury them in 
pauper's graves. 

Such charity beneficiaries cannot, indeed, be very 
profitable customers for farm produce, groceries, dry goods, 
-coal, etc. 

And every recurring crisis means still more of these 
people to sup at the dregs of poverty ! 

And almost every new machine cripples the skill or 
trade of another class of workers, takes their jobs away from 
them, and in many cases virtually robs them of their means 
of gaining a livelihood. 

You farmers say. and say truly, that, in order to com- 
pete, you must have the best up-to-date machinery. 

When the reaper came to replace the cradle, you 
thought : •• Xow ! the expenses in harvesting wheat will be 
much less, and the profits far greater !" 

When the binder came to replace the reaper you prob- 
ably thoughr the same : and you no doubt thought likewise 
concerning the mower, the horse-rake, the seeder, the drill, 
the gang-plow, and the thresher. 

Surely, farming ought to be many times more profitable 
today than when you harvested the grain with the cradle 
and threshed it out in the winter with the flail. 

Yet, are the farmers very much more prosperous and 
happy now-a-days than they were in those so-called ;, good 
old days of the hand cradle and flail?" If not. WHO has 
been reaping the benefit from all this labor-saving ma- 
chinery ? 

However it may be with you farmers and wage-workers, 
there is a class, a growx-to-be-yery-priyileged-class, 
which seems to have prospered amazingly. 



21. 

Never in the world's history was there such a heaping 1 
together of great fortunes by rich men, corporations and 
trusts as at the present time. And never amid such plenty 
was there such want and suffering amo; g the poor ! 

The influence of labor-saving machinery SHOULD, and 
under a just and scientific system of distributing wealth, i. 
e., the products of labor, we know it WOULD be a successful 
means by which all people would have a great many 
more and far greater opportunities and privileges, and 
afford themselves many times more comforts, pleasures and 
happiness than what were possible before this day of great 
and wonderful machinery. 

Now, friends, I am not in the least disposed to clamor 
for generally leveling selfish equality. The one whose 
brain institutes and whose zeal and honestly earned and ac- 
quired capital — not, mind you, dishonest, watered capital,, 
capital created from "wind" through means of cunning 
schemes and unscrupulous influence — but I say the one 
whose honest capital and brain carries forward an enter- 
prise is entitled to his share of remuneration for the same. 
And the workmen who furnish the mental and manual skill 
and labor necessary to the carrying out of these plans, are 
also entitled to a fair and just remuneration for what they 
bring into the enterprise. 

If this principle, the principle advocated in the much 
revered book, were carried out, there would be fewer great 
fortunes, and the poverty, privations and sufferings among, 
the toilers of the earth would be for the most part unknown. 

And there would be much less of the general denial of 
men's rights to the product of their labor, which proposition 
is in fact a denial of their right to be men and merely grant- 
ing them the privilege to be part slave and only in part free 
men. 



22. 

We should be uncompromisingly opposed to those 
principles of monopoly-influenced government which foster 
and protect the ingenius devices of great capitalists and em- 
ployers for compelling the millions of hard-working, faithful 
and honest wage-earners and farmers to "divide up" the 
products of their toil with these greedy usurpers. 

When the wage-earners are paid their fair proportion of 
what they produce and farmers receive the right prices for 
their products, then there can be plenty in their homes and 
not so much of an over-supply ( " over-production ") in the 
wholesale and store-houses. 

What we working people really want, is what of right 
belongs to us ; no more, no less. 

We want to be guaranteed in the possession and enjoy- 
ment of all that value which our labor produces or may 
produce with the unrestricted aid of the best modern skill 
and machinery. 

As we workers can today produce many-fold more of the 
necessities and comforts of this life than ever before since 
history began, we could supply all our wants with only a 
fraction of our present toil were we not prevented from pro- 
ducing because we cannot secure access to the tools and ma- 
chinery with which to work, or else largely deprived of the 
results of our toil by a privileged class of capitalists. 

There is one remedy for this condition. It is for the 
toilers of field, workshop and office to unite and secure 
possession and control of the reins of government, then 
secure possession of the instruments of production and dis- 
tribution ; and then being the possessors as well as the pro- 
ducers, they can retain the whole product and can produce 
till their wants are satisfied, with less care for falling or 
rising prices and the so-called "over-production " or panics. 

The railroads, telegraphs and elevators ; 



23. 

CREAMERIES, CHEESE FACTORIES, AND BINDER AND DRILL 
^MANUFACTORIES, LIKE THE STEEL WORKS, COTTON MILLS, 
COAL MINES AND SHOE FACTORIES, SHOULD BE IN THE 
POSSESSION OF AND CONTROLLED BY THE COMMON- 
WEALTH. 

They must be like the public highways and public 
schools, the United States mail industry and^niany municipal 
water- works, lighting- plants, street cars, etc., in the posses- 
sion of the public, the whole body of producers who are the 
only really consistent and suitable owners of such 
public utilities, and who must be organized] for the purpose 
of controlling and operating them. 



24. 



CHAPTER IV. 

The previously mentioned propositions and demands, 
and the necessities, occasions and causes for^the same were 
not so much in existence a few generations ago ; but they 
have — as already intimated — largely materialized with the 
growth of modern machinery. 

It must not be forgotten that the pulse and the pace of 
the world were marvelously quickened during the nine- 
teenth century. 

The larger proportion of civilized man's progress has 
been made since the application of the power of steam and 
electricity to travel, commerce, manufacturing, printing, 
etc. And the impetus which was given to inter-communi- 
cation of every sort by the application of steam power alone, 
was the beginning of a new life in the world. 

Although invented in the eighteenth century, the spin- 
ning wheel, the power loom, and Whitney's cotten-gin, did 
not come into common use until the nineteenth century. 
And at the outbreak of the Revolutionary war, there were 
still in use, in both English and American homes, the same 
primitive means by which the world's wool and flax had 
been reduced to yarn for thousands of years ; and the meth- 



25. 

ods of travel and communication were just as primitive as 
those of manufacture. 

Toward the close of the eighteenth century, Lord Camp- 
bell, having accomplished the journey from Edinburgh to 
London in three clays and three nights, was warned by his 
most judicious friends — medical advisors — that such rapidity 
of motion would prove fatal to his life. Yet, in 1888, the 
same journey was made in seven hours and thirty-two 
minutes, the medical advisors notwithstanding. 

In 1847 it took Dr. Atkinson eight months to travel from 
New Ed gland to Oregon. When he returned the journey 
occupied but six days. 

When the battle of Waterloo was fought, (1815) all 
haste delivered the thrilling dispatches in London three 
days later. 

The news of the bombardment of Fort Sumpter, (1861) 
was received in our national capital a few minutes after the 
first gun was fired . 

"If there be yet living anyone who was born with the 
birth of the nineteenth century, he has seen a very large 
proportion of ail the progress of civilization in the race. 

When seven years old he might have seen Fulton's 
steamboat on her trial trip up the Hudson. 

Until twenty years of age he could not have found in all 
the world an iron plow. 

At thirty he might have travelled on the first passenger 
train. 

And he was thirty-eight before steam communication 
between Europe and America was established." 

And so we see that the nineteenth century was an 
epoch, as it were, for a raising flood of inventions — invent- 
ive MACHINERY ! 

And almost every invention has created new situ a- 



26. 

TIONS, NEW CONDITIONS, NEW CIRCUMSTANCES ! But there 

has been wanting that requisite ninible-niindedness to in- 
stitute new principles of government, to fit, to conform to, 
or keep pace with, the thus changed conditions and circum- 
stances 

In other words, statesmanship has been somewhat out- 
stripped by inventive genius. 

When our forefathers framed our national constitution, 
the foundations of the republic, they sought to lay such 
foundation- principles as would guarantee to all its citizens 
equal opportunities in ki life, liberty and the pursuit of 
happiness/' 

For instance, among the many questions which they had 
to consider was one of a mail system : and while there was 
among them a Tory faction which favored leaving the mail 
industry, the establishing and maintaining of postomces, to 
private enterprise, to the management and control of priv- 
ate individuals, or private corporations ; the majority states- 
manship of that day said, "No ! " 

And, quite properly, the mail business was declared a 
natural monopoly, a power over the masses which should 
never be given over to the relentless manipulations of 
greedy capitalists and combines. No man was ever to be- 
come a millionaire in this business. And as a means of 
securing equal privileges, equal opportunities to all, and 
special privileges to none, it was decreed that, "Congress 
shall have power to establish post-offices and post-roads." 

But Madison, Hamilton, Washington, Robert Morris 
and their associates, knew not of the nineteenth century's 
steam and electricity, and the part they were to play in 
economics. In fact, these fathers of the republic could 
scarcely even dream of our modern gigantic labor-saving 
machinery and its radical influence upon the relations be- 



27. 

tween employers and employees. Hence, the fathers did not 
make — they could not make any definite or specific pro- 
visions for regulating and correcting such evils as were to 
attend these new conditions which have resulted from the 
influences of machine inventions. 

Now, then, I am aware that there are those who will 
attempt to refute these statements, basing their argument 
upon the grounds that the Constitution provides for patent- 
right laws, etc., etc. This provision of the Constitution, 
providing for patent-right laws is in the following language: 

"The congress shall have power to promote the 
progress of science and useful arts, by securing 
for limited times to authors and inventors the ex- 
clusive right to their respective writings and dis- 
coveries." 

There is nothing in this clause of the Constitution that 
either indicates or implies that Congress was to have power 
to enact patent laws that would be instrumental in propagat- 
ing monopolies and trusts to the injury of " the general 
welfare." On the contrary, "to promote the pro- 
gress OF SCIENCE AND USEFUL ARTS," is the plainly 
avowed purpose for which Congress was granted power to 
secure "for limited times to inventors the exclusive right to 
their discoveries." 

From this we see that the purpose of patent laws as 
authorized in the Constitution was purely, "TO promote 

THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE, AND USEFUL ARTS," and why 

w^as it designed, "to promote the progres of science 

AND USEFUL ARTS ? " 

It certainly could not have been designed as a means to 

DETERIORATE "THE GENERAL WELFARE, " by fostering and 

protecting great monopolies and combines ; because in the 
preamble of the Constitution itself, it is affirmed to be its 



28. 

solemn purpose "to promote the general welfare." 

But. of this patent law question, I will speak a little 
more in detail later on. 

It is. however, very evident that the "fathers" did 
not in the least anticipate the propagation of these present- 
day monopolies and trusts which would not have been possi- 
ble were it not for the peculiar influences of the gigantic 
labor-saving machinery, the magnitude of which the 
" fathers " had no conception or forethoughts. 

Those principles of government bequeathed to us by our 
forefathers, were, under the conditions and circumstances 
which then existed, fairly effectual in excluding or pro- 
hibiting the evils of monopoly or tyranny and establishing* 
fair and reasonable justice. But under the present day 
conditions, so very different from those of our "fathers" 
those principles of government, once so complete, are now 
very incomplete and wholly inadequate to maintain fair 
justice and protect the masses against the encrouchments 
of cunning schemers and organized wealth. Quite the con- 
trary of original intent, this government, as formed by our 
"fathers," is being used and misused to help build up 
and defend the grossest injustice of monopoly and tyranny. 

These new conditions, as before stated, have been creep- 
ing upon us — mostly as a result of machine inventions. 

Among the far reaching influences of labor-saving in- 
ventions has been the tendency — which is as yet unchecked 
— to heighten differences of condition, to establish social 
classes, and to erect barriers between them. Never before 
in this country were class distinctions so great as they are 
today. Compare the conditions and privileges of the child 
who is born and reared in the slums of the great cities with 
those of the child that is born on "Fifth Avenue," the 
"Lake Shore Drive," or "Nob Hill." 



29. 

Yet, "All inen are created equal. " Of coarse classes will 
and must exist, in a sense, wherever there are semblances 
and differences : and so long as the individual members of 
the different classes may easily rise or fall from one to the 
other, by virtue of their own efforts, such classes are neither 
unsafe nor unrepublican. But when the classes with their 
class distinctions become hereditary, when the differences, 
the special privileges, the opportunities and the denied 
opportunities with their attending envy, want, and 
squalor, all are inherited, and the antipathies are thus in- 
creased and strengthened ; the gulf between the classes is 
then widened, and they harden into hereditary casts which 
are both unrepublican and dangerous. 

Now then, that the tendency of machine inventions, 
under our present system of commercial and industrial war- 
fare, is to separate the classes more widely and to render 
them hereditary, cannot be reasonably denied. 

Before the age of machinery, master journeyman and 
apprentice worked together, side by side, on familiar terms. 
The apprentice looked forward to the time when he should 
receive a journeyman's wages, and the journeyman might 
reasonably hope some day to have a shop of his own. Under 
these conditions, there was comparatively little opportunity 
to develope wide class distinctions and jealousies. 

Tools were not so expensive but that the workman 
might easily possess a full outfit of his own ; and if he did 
not like his employer he could leave him, taking with him 
the means of earning a livelihood ; and if he did not easily 
find another employer, he could somewhere set up business 
for himself. And this single fact of the workman's having 
his own tools made him quite independent. 

But the introduction of machinery has changed all this. 
It cannot be carried from place to place — the machinery 



30. 

cannot — as could the kit of tools. It is too expensive for the 
ordinary workman to possess; and without the machinery 
which the employer controls, the workman is helpless. He 
( tie present day workman ) cannot — alone by himself — pro- 
duce or make goods with hand-made tools and so engage in 
business as was done a few generations ago. He does 
not know how, and it would be very difficult for him 
to learn ; because there is scarcely anyone, if any at all, to 
teach him — his forefathers' methods of doing work by hand, 
being to a very large extent among the " lost arts." So 
all people today are virtually dependent upon the great ma- 
chinery which is controlled by a comparatively few privi- 
leged persons. 

And if the workman of today finds himself out of a job, 
he cannot set up business for himself as his forefathers 
could have done. 

He has lost that blessed privilege ! 

He has lost that independence ! 

And he has become a member of that vast and increas- 
ing army of dependent wage-workers, or "wage-slaves,* 
which has thus been developed by the inovation of ma- 
chinery. 

The advent of machinery has rendered it vastly more 
difficult to rise ( under the present system ) from the condi- 
tion of an employee to that of an employer, thus separating 
these classes more widely and more permanently. Once they 
were comparatively only a step apart. And that step could 
be very easily taken by one workman employing another — 
a, perhaps, younger man than himself. They could work 
along together, side by side, till the business demanded a 
new "hand," and then another, and so on, until the little 
shop had grown into a large one. And in this way the 
workman could gradually acquire capital by a course that 
was open to everybody. 



31. 

But in this age of steam and electric machinery — and 
with our present unscientific system of permitting the great 
manufacturing, transportation and communication enter- 
prises and facilities to be possessed and controlled by private 
capitalists and corporations instead of by the public which 
should be the only agency for controlling and operating such 
public utilities — a considerable of ( private ) capital is need- 
ed in order to make a beginning in any one of these 
lines of industry. Hence, the smaller capitalists and 
in fact, all the common people, the really useful workers, 
are debarred from the privilege and opportunity of en- 
gaging, independently and for themselves, in any of these 
lines of business. 

So the millionaire class of capitalists are absolute 
rulers in these very important industries. 

But let the masses organize and secure the control of 
government, and then embark in these great business en- 
terprises, as a government undertaking ; then, all will 
share alike in the benefits from these great industries, and 
the millionaire will be minus many of his present games 
for " plucking the common toilers." 

At the present the great railways, telegraphs, mines, 
etc., are natural private monopolies, very much like the 
wagon roads were when they were possessed and con- 
trolled by private individuals instead of by the public, and 
as it was with schools when all were select or private 
schools in lieu of our present-day public schools. 

And, again, we find thai-, other things being equal, the 
small factory, railway or mine, or in fact, the small industry 
of almost any kind cannot compete with the larger one. 
Hence, great fortunes are amassed or combined for estab- 
lishing factories, railways, and other enterprises upon a 
very large and extensive scale. 



32. 

The larger factory or other industry " freezes out " 
the smaller one, drives the smaller capitalist out of business 
and in many cases into bankruptcy. Then the great factory 
has a monopoly of the field, is master of the situation," and 
CAN and does establish exorbitant prices ; and we people 
must pay these dishonest and extortionate prices or do with- 
out a great many of the common everyday necessities. 

Yes, these great "private monopolies are inde- 
fensible AND INTOLERABLE. THEY DO " DESTROY COM- 
PETITION AND CONTROL THE PRICES OF ALL MATERIAL 
AND FINISHED PRODUCTS, THUS ROBBING THE PRODUCER 
AND COMSUMER. " THEY DO "LESSEN THE EMPLOYMENT 
OF LABOR AND ARBITRARILY FIX THE TERMS AND CON- 
DITIONS THEREOF, " AND THEY DO "DEPRIVE INDIVIDUAL 
ENERGY AND SMALL CAPITAL OF THEIR OPPORTUNITY FOR 
BETTERMENT. THEY ARE THE MOST EFFICIENT MEANS 
YET DEVISED FOR APPROPRIATING THE FRUITS OF IN- 
DUSTRY TO THE BENEFIT OF THE FEW AT THE EXPENSE 
OF THE MANY," AND, UNLESS THEY ARE "CONVEYED INTO 
THE HANDS OF THE COMMONWEAL, ALL WEALTH WILL BE 
AGGREGATED INTO A FEW HANDS AND THE REPUBLIC DE- 
STROYED ! " 

Under the present system, although the workman by 
some clever invention of his own, or some remarkably super- 
ior abilities, or some happy streak of luck, may possibly be- 
come a capitalist and an employer, the odds are most serious- 
ly against him. 

The condition of the average workman is separated from 
that of his employer by an almost impassable gulf. 

Machinery has tended to create a class of capitalists and 
monopolists on one side and wage-slaves on the other. 

Before the day of this machinery, manufacturing power, 
as well as the power for transportation, etc., etc., was in the 






33. 

workmen's own hands. They controlled it then — the work- 
men did, and it could not be monopolized and centralized 
away from them as it now is. 

Every man, then, had a fair chance to compete with 
•every other man ; and no one could exercise any such un- 
just and immeasurable advantages as the privileged classes, 
the millionaire classes, are perpetrating now-a-days. 

But modern machinery, under the present system, per- 
mits one man to acquire possession and control of a power 
equal to that of thousands of other men. 

The very fact that forces of such magnitude are avail- 
able to the manipulations of some avaricious men who are 
seemingly drunk with a thirst for plunder and power, make 
the concentration of wealth and its attendant powers both 

CERTAIN and DANGEROUS. 

The masters of these forces are TOO frequently the 
NEROS and herods of modern society. 

The employer in a monopoly-industry is not a workman 
among His employees. 

His work is not so much manual but more mental, and 
diversified, and while it exercises and develops all of his 
abilities ; the work of his employees being classified into 
special routines tends to cramp all of their faculties. 

He has but very little personal acquaintance with his 
employees ; and, with very rare exceptions, he has no per- 
sonal interest in their welfare. 

He knows that any time he so chooses he may dispense 
with any one or all of them, and recruit their places from 
the ranks of those unemployed who can find no better em- 
ployment. 

Thus, the classes are growing apart, notwithstanding 
the adage that, " Every change of conditions which tends to 
widen the differences between the classes and thus to impair 



34. 

the sympathies between the rich and the poor cannot fail — 
however apparently beneficial its temporary effects — to 
bring with it sooner or later grave dangers to the state." 

And, my friends, as we all too well understand, not 
only are the classes now-a-days thus becoming further 
removed from each other, but they are becoming 
organized against each other ! Capital is combined in 
powerful corporations and trusts, and labor is organized in 
great trades-unions. And these opposing organizations make 
trials of strentgh, offer terms and conditions of surrender, 
like great hostile armies. And as is being demonstrated 
more and more, the first to fall in these great industrial 
and commercial battles, are always the poor, weak and less 
cunning — the helpless and innocent ! 

The labor unions cannot cope with these terrible corpor- 
ations so long as they permit them to possess and control the 
greater avenues of industry, so long as they. permit them to 
control such industries as are natural monopolies. 

With their wives and children threatened with destitu- 
tion, the countless poor workmen are, sooner or later, com- 
pelled to submit. While waiting for a little time to force 
the poor workmen into submission, the millionaires may 
make a few pleasure excursions in " private palace cars," 
which have been built and furnished by half -paid workmen. 

But, "No!" Some people say: "The working-man 
does not have to submit to such beggarly wage-rates as the 
corporations have a mind to dictate, unless he so chooses." 

They tell us that, "the American is free." 

And that we must admit is somewhat true. 

The American workman, like some others, has one al- 
ternative. 

Instead of working for unreasonably poor pay, they can 

STARVE ! 



35. 

But will a starving miner, factory workman or mill- 
hand with his empty pocket-book, help out the prices of our 
American farmers' wheat and cotton ? 

Do such conditions improve the market for our beef and 
pork, our butter and eggs ? 

Or can these difficulties be soothed in any degree by 
an additional application of either the so-called "protective 
tariff," or " tariff for revenue? " 

I know not how some of you people may feel about it ! 

But, as it seems to me, than this question of so antago- 
nizing the classes against each other, none greater could ever 
threaten the welfare and safety of a republic. 

The existing conditions are, in the central localities, 
continually intensifying the differences between the classes!. 
The armies of unemployed are increasing from clay to day ; 
from year to year ; and more and more are a great many 
people losing all due respect for law and order, and be- 
coming imbued with that stealthy, secretly rising senti- 
ment OF ANARCHY ! 

The anarchist would have no law, no government, 
neither good nor bad ! It is evidently because he recognizes 
so many bad laws and not the good ones, that he believes 
any government is worse than no government ! 

Repeal bad law and enact good, and perhaps the poor 
anarchist will change his mind. 

Little may we wonder at the terrible increase of crime ! 

In the midst of wealth and plenty, with the gifts of na- 
ture everywhere in abundance, and with mills, mines and 
factories closed down because of a so-called "over-produc- 
tion;" there are great numbers of would-be faithful, in- 
dustrious every-day-workers who are in enforced idle- 
ness, and as a consequence they have not and cannot get the 
food and clothing which they deserve and which is in all 
honor due them ! 



36. 

Again, I ask, is it because there is so much food and 
clothing- in the country that there is so much gaunt want 
and unrequited toil ? 

"The heart and brain of every honest man must tell 
him that somewhere something is wrong. " 

"Labor produces wealth ! " 

Capitalists get the best of it. 

Capital robs labor through the force of combination, 
through the power of the monopoly and trust. 

While the masses are doing the work, the trusts and 
corporations are collecting the better per centage of their 
wages. And the great wealth which the millionaires have 
so dishonestly acquired is being held more sacred than 
human life. 

"The immensely rich claim the right to combine but de- 
ny the same right to the poor. They meet in banks, club- 
houses and parlors to consult and exchange ideas. The 
poor meet in the streets for the same purpose," and they 
are not only denounced as a public nusiance, but they have 
been murdered outright by Hazelton's deputies ! 

The corporations cut down wages to poverty-reducing 
figures and call is "business"— "the right of capital to 
manage its own affairs ! " 

Labor combines to resist such oppression, and their 
organization is declared a crimial conspiracy ! 

Should the organization prove effectual, it is called a 
mob, and troops at the bidding of capital from Pullman- 
town or elsewhere, SHOOT the laborers down. 

Capitalists as a rule are getting richer by co-operation 
and combination, while labor is in many cases growing 
poorer, and in every case more dependent and helpless. 

Was ever a system of slavery more effectual ? 

If SO, IN WHAT respect ? 



37. 

The power of a monopoly or trust to suppress com- 
petition, limit production, and fix unfair and dishonest 
prices, is a power to enslave. 

This is the power responsible for the unjust distribution 
of wealth. 

This is the power which is making the few so unreason- 
ably and intolerably rich and the many so cruelly poor. 

"Whenever any combination, or trust, swallows up com- 
petition and sells to the public its products at prices that 
make millionaire stock-holders, those stock-holders become 
in part, slave-owners, and every purchaser of their goods 
becomes a slave ! 

In this power of the private monopolies and trusts to 
suppress competition, limit production, and fix dishonest 
and extortionate prices, is the whip and hound of modern 
slavery ! 

Too numerous to enumerate are the many trusts and 
monopolies that today hold the patient, honest producers of 
America in bondage ! 

"Their objects and purposes " may be " everywhere the 
same." 

" They " usually " rob the' workers to feed the drones ! " 

"They punish honest industry and reward scheming in- 
dolence ! " 

In all common-sense-justice, the perpetrations of private 
monopolies and trusts are both tyrannical and criminal. 
No wonder the poor helpless workman losses respect for law 
and order and resorts to criminal means ; when by taxing 
workingmen armies and navies are being equipped to pro- 
tect the property of the rich and shoot down the laboring- 
men. 

If the wealth in the hands of any millionaire is in 
danger of being destroyed, any poor workingman may, at 



38. 

the risk of his life, be compelled to do the role of a soldier 
and protect the wealth dishonestly claimed by the millioniare. 
And thus it is. The poor man may be compelled at any 
time to give his life to save the rich man's possessions; 
but none of the rich man's possessions can be used to save a 
poor man from freezing or starving. That is, that's the 
case now while the rich have control of the government. In 
a rich man's government, "the dollar "is " above the man," 
the poor man's life is of little consequence as against the 
rich man's possessions, which possessions, as before stated, 
the rich man's government regards as being more sacred 
than the poor man's life ! 

But let us have a people's government, a common work- 
ingman's government 1 And then, the rich man's posses- 
sions cannot consist, as they now do, of a vast amount of 
wealth that really belongs to the common people, the people 
whose labor produced it. 

"The true purpose of human government is the promo- 
tion and development of the human race ; " i. e., not a crea- 
tion of antagonistic classes, but to aim at the promotion and 
development of a true brotherhood. And so long as the rich 
man's government lasts we cannot wonder at the increase 
of crime ; for this present capitalistic government is pro- 
moting the propagation of both anarchy and crime, which as 
a consequence must be more and more apparent until the 
common people take a hand in affairs and deal out more 
common-sense-justice and less tyranny. 

The present system must be changed or the republic 
will not long endure. 

As all people have, NOW, equal privileges to enjoy the 
advantages of public mails, so also should we all have equal 
privileges to enjoy the benefits of having all other natural 



39. 

monopolies controlled and operated by the commonweal and 
for the common good. 

Owing to the fact, that we being- asleep as it were, have 
so universally tolerated such hitherto unprecedented private 
monopolies and trusts, we American workers have "as the 
crowning glory of a century of development upon a virgin 
continent, the fact of having produced more millionaires 
among our masters than any producers the world has ever 
known." We have produced thousands of millionaires 
and the consequent millions of paupers. These ruling capi- 
talists, in order to accumulate such great wealth, have, by 
means of private monopolies and trusts, " fleeced " millions 
of their f eilowmen. That is, they have both directly and in- 
directly robbed farmers and wage- workers of a large part of 
the fruits of their toil, and thereby driven them to the 
threshold of poverty. 

The fact is, these millionaires have virtually compelled 
the farmers and wage- workers to "divide up " the results 
of their labor. 

And many of these poor defrauded people are keen to 
recognize the cruelty and injustice of their lot, and for this 
reason, some of them have become sulky and taken to tramp- 
ing ; and, not only this disposition to tramp, but, as previ- 
ously stated, not such a few of them are embracing the 
doctrines of anarchy ! 

As it seems to me, the anarchist is simply a product, a 
product of unequal and unfair industrial conditions. Con- 
ditions, for instance, in which one man may acquire a 
fifty-year franchise of a city's streets, in which to run cars, 
electric lights, water-works, etc., at his own figure; and he 
proceeds to water the sto'ck at leasure and to pass it off on 
the innocent people at par. Of course, "such a man can 
employ labor." He can employ a whole retinue of servants, 



40. 

and his children after him can do the same. It is just possi- 
ble that when we are dead and gone, some of our children 
may be able to get employment as their valets, coachmen or 
cooks. 

What great philosophers, some of us people are, as, with 
a sort of a half smile or sneer, we try to conjure up a refuta- 
tion of the existing conditions ? 

The trouble is, many of us have no conception of what 
immense wealth really means. 

Some of us even speak for and try to defend the im- 
mensely rich, seemingly trying to imagine that we ourselves 
are almost rich and courting the delusive and wicked hope 
1 that we may yet draw prizes and become millionaires ; while 
on the contrary, we have a hundred to one better chances 
of dying in the poor house. 

True, a steel trust, a railway combine, or any other 
gigantic monopoly whose purpose is to perpetrate legal- 
theft may vote an unmerited, unearned million dollar salary 
to a Mr. Schwab, a Mr. Cunning or a Mr. Schemer. And 
this may be the occasion for numerous servile editors to 
write enthusiastic specious articles on the opportunities ( '? ) 
offered to young men by the great corporations, etc., etc. 
It may also call forth considerable blatant balderdash from 
certain so-called cultured and respectable pulpits and college 
rostroms. But all the exuberant rantings of stultified edit- 
ors, preachers and professors, cannot change the FACTS. 
Where this lottery system of monopoly offers such an oppor- 
tunity to one man, it closes the door of opportunity to 
thousands of others who are equally able, and many of them 
far more worthy and deserving. , 

"When all the great industries are controlled by trusts, 
there will be a few big salaried officials and the remainder 
of the employees will be condemned to perpetual clerkships 



41. 

with no possibility of independence in the business world. 

If the present tendency toward consolidation becomes 
permanent, it is only a question of time when, as already 
pointed out, "the principle positions in the corporations will 
go to relatives and favorites, and descend from generation to 
generation." 

And as for the average millionaire, when divested of 
all masks or screens, his methods are found to be scarcely 
above those of the highwayman, who also employs servants, 
donates to charitable institutions, etc., etc. 

How many ways these fellows have of appropriating to 
their own ill-gotten gains the people's wealth. 

"Oneway, they get control of two parellel railroads; 
then they divert the bulk of the business to one road, in- 
crease its dividends and sell its stock at a high price, while 
they buy at a low price the stock of the other road in which 
the dividends have been driven down; then they reverse 
the operation, divert the business back to the road in which 
they have bought the stock at a very low price and away 
from the road in which they have sold the stock at a very 
high price. In such an operation there are very extortionate 
profits." 

Many millionaires have been made in this way. 
"And another way in which these fellows have manipulated 
matters to accumulate such great and almost incomprehens- 
ible wealth, which they possess, is to get people to subscribe 
to build a railway. Then the directors let the contract for 
construction at an outrageously high price to a company 
composed of themselves. A first mortgage is put upon the 
road to help pay the bill, that mortgage is foreclosed! 
And the directors, strictly in compliance with premeditated 
calculations, bid in the road, freezing out the little original 



42. 

stock-holders. In other words, they confiscate their proper- 
ty." 

They don't make the small stock-holders "divide up:" 
but much worse, they just simply take all that the poor 
fellows have. 

Man}', millionaires and multi-millionaires have been 
made by this method an 1 various similar methods ; but I 
will not further delineate upon such. 

About the oft-repeated, though most erroneous, asser- 
tion that, "The millionaires have earned the money : " and 
that. "Therefore they have a right to the immense wealth 
which they possess and control." 

How utterly impossible and visionary SUCH a theory — 
that any one man can honestly earn a million dollars. 

Why, my friends, just stop and think for a minute what 
such immense wealth really does mean. 

In order for one man to EARN a million dollars, even if 
he received the nice handsome wage of ten dollars per day 
for each of the three hundred thirteen working days of 
every year, and if he never lost a day from sickness nor took 
a holiday for recreation, and even if he lived upon his 
wife's relatives and never spent a cent, he would thus in- 
cessantly have to toil and sweat, year in and year out, for 
upwards of three hundred and nineteen years, very nearly 
three hundred and twenty years. 

Has Mark Hanna toiled so long ? 

Have any of our immensely rich gentlemen toiled thus 
long ? 

And let us remember that the multi-millionaire gentry 
would have to toil as many times three hundred and nine- 
teen years as the number of millions which they possess. 
And many of them who control several hundred millions 
would need to toil several hundred times three hundred 



43. 

and nineteen years. 'Am afraid it would put a few more 
gray hairs in their heads than what are to be SEEN there. 

And mind you also, my friends, that these figures are 
based on the nice sound price of ten dollars per day for 
every day in the year. 

But how is it with the common people ? Xot MANY of 
us are getting ten dollars per day. nor can we find remuner- 
ative employment for every day in the year or anything 
like it. And I don't believe that very many of you, my 
comrades, are so fortunate as to be supported by your 
mother-in-law. You. therefore, instead of saving every 
cent, 'must spend a good share of what you earn as fast as 
you get it : and in cases of sickness or enforced idleness 
from other causes, you find that your salary is gone before it- 
is earned. 

But say, boys, the millionaires ! 

AH ! THOSE ARE THE FELLOWS ! 

They just compel the relatives to support them. 

And you, my friends, you so-called "American voting- 
kings '' who are always patted on the shoulder just previous 
to election day — you are among those relatives. 

You are those kindly distant cousins — " noble descend- 
ants of Adam." 

"You eat your bread in the sweat of your faces." And 
the millionaires — they eat your cake "in the sweat of your 
iaces.'' 

How do they get it ? 

They just simply coxficate it ! 

They steal it ! 

THEY STEAL IT ! 

And. my friends, the most deplorable of all is — they 
steal it through the SANCTION and protection of law. 
The law of the trust, the law of the combine, the law of the 



44. 

• 
private monopoly ! It is the law of modern tyranny ! 

The laws of our country are made, unmade and remade 
by legislative officials. These legislative officials represent 
certain political parties. They, often as perhaps deemed 
necessary, control the primaries, then dominate the conven- 
tions ; and the general rule is, they succeed in dictating the 
naming of candidates, from the president down. And then, 
with plenty of money, extorted from the working classes, 
the millionaires may hire the best equipped newspapers and 
most talented orators on their side, and, with such great in- 
fluence at their command, carry their favorite candidates in- 
to office and power — power to enact any law they choose — 
and they may be quite frequently disposed to choose 
almost any conceivable subterfuge, and make laws that 
will gratify the blind avarice of the millionaires : make laws 
that will further, if possible, their power to plunder and rob. 
When the legislative officials have been elected mainly 
through the means of million-dollar pocket-books, 
the millionaires are usually able, as a matter- 
of-course, to command such officials to do their bid- 
ding. And then, think how easy through their monopoly 
and trust power, the millionaires can make the common 
workers and consumers pay the vast amounts used to carry 
on the political campaigns. Yes it is the money which the 
millionaires have virtually stolen from the masses who do 
all the useful and necessary work, that affords them the 
power to manipulate political parties, and thus to usurp and 
hold subject to their own control the machinery of govern- 
ment. Yes, however reluctant we inay be to admit it — we 
workers, we producers of wealth — are nevertheless, meekly 
Paying the millionaires for tyrannizing over us ! 

With no apparent difficulties, they hold us in bond- 
age to the private monopoly and trust! 



45. 

YVe furnish them with means necessary to enable them 
thus to rule over us in royal fashion ! 

The working-man pays for all ! 

And yet, a very large per centage of the wealth which 
the poor man's labor has made is in the hands of the privi- 
leged class of people. 

And the most of these people are not what we may call 
useful workers, good, useful members of society. They are 
the cunning, scheming " drones ; " they are the enemies of 
the great commonwealth. And these scheming "drones, " 
steeped, as it were, in their blind, bigoted avarice — they 
have the brazen stupid nerve to assert that they are the 
really true and honorable owners of the immense wealth 
which they possess and control, and that they have acquired 
this vast wealth by honest, ( ? ) honorable ( ? ) methods. It 
is that very delusive and dangerous bigotry born of greed 
and selfishness which promotes the propagation of such 
tyrannical doctrines. And, deplorable as it is, the press, 
political parties and their leaders, our statesmen and orators, 
the judges and juries, and even the* colleges and churches 
a great many of them are SUPPORTING this cruel doctrine of 
modern tyranny. 

The powerful influence of selfishness and greed clothed 
in the guise of monopoly and trust tends very much to give 
a false color to this delusive doctrine of tyranny ; and as a 
result, all classes — the rich, the poor, the righteous and the 
wicked — are all more or less bound in the chains of supersti- 
tion. 

Now, then, my friends, I am very well aware that this 
is touching many of you upon very sensitive and tender 
hords. 

Of course it is very hard for you to believe that YOU are 
votaries of superstitious doctrines and beliefs. You, with- 



46. 

out doubt, think that YOU are clear-headed and that YOIT 
know your own mind and know what to believe ana what 
not to believe, etc., etc. And likewise, I believe and I think 
that you also believe that our ancestors, all the way back to 
the beginning of history, had just as good opinions of them- 
selves as we people today have of ourselves. They, no 
doubt, thought that they were clear-headed and that they 
also knew what to believe and what not to believe. Yet, it 
is now-a-days generally admitted and without contradiction, 
that humanity has been more or less bound down in the 
chains of oppression and superstition ! In their misguided 
fears and superstitious beliefs, the masses were at one time 
the slaves of feudal lords ; and at another time they were, 
many of them, the wretched victims of witchcraft ; again, 
during all history, superstitious humanity has been known to 
be meekly submissive to the tyranny of king-craft and 
priest-craft. 

And, however reluctant we may be to assent to it, we 
toilers of the world today are altogether too superstitiously 
submissive to the tyranny of private monopolies and trusts. 

Superstition and also bigotry is a weakness of humanity, 
which, perhaps, cannot be entirely and permanently shaken 
oif . And, therefore, mankind cannot maintain too vigilant 
a guard against this weakness. The more confidence with 
which a child believes and accepts in all faith without ques- 
tion as to " whys " and "wherefores," without trying to 
reason for himself upon whatever the parent may tell him ; 
the weaker that child is and therefore more easy to become 
a victim to superstition and bigotry. 

And mothers who may pride themselves, that their 
children believe whatever they tell them, without question, 
or without seeking an explanation, should exercise more 
vigilance and strive as early as possible to lead the little 



47. 

ones to expect and look for explanations and for the "whys" 
and ' 'wherefores, ' ' that they may believe because their under- 
standing, or reason, tells them as well as because, "Mamma 
says so." Training a child to believe in his own rpason, as 
well as the say-so of his parents and teachers, can in no de- 
gree lessen his respect for them ; but, on the contrary, it 
must tend to deepen his respect for them and also to fortify 
him for this life's battle with the superstition, bigotry and 
tyranny, that always have been and probably always will 
be the bulwarks of human greed and selfishness. The child 
who may sincerely say. "It's so when mother says so," 
whether it is so or not, is very apt to become a victim of 
these vices. 

Again, I will touch a tender chord ! I say ditto with 
men. 

The man who belongs to a certain church or party and 
for no better or stronger reasons than that his parents or 
some of his special friends belong to the same, or without he 
be a knave who considers the matter from the standpoint 
of policy ; then, I say, that man is very much inclined to 
bigotry. 

And if any man, with no other or stronger reasons, be- 
lieves in any particular or economic dogma either because 
his father did or because his father didn't believe in the 
same, or because some very much admired friend or states- 
man or else his "party " professes to believe in the doc- 
trine ; then, I say that man is a victim of bigotry and ought 
to try and reform. 

Again, I say, those men, whether they be millionaires 
or paupers— those men who think the millionaires are the 
really true and justifiable owners of the immense wealth 
which they possess and control — those men are very much 
deluded with the teachings of modern bigotry ! 



48. 

Wealth belongs to the person whose labor created it, 
and the people to whom any wealth belongs, are the real 
owners thereof. And, for the most part, the millionaires 
are not the really true and honest owners of the great 
wealth that tbey possess and control: on the contrary, the 
common workers, the masses, are in all righteousness, in 
all honor and comraon-sense-justice the really true owners 
of this wealth. 

It belongs to them ! 

Their hard and honest toil, has produced it ! 

While the millionaires have done some truly useful 
work and produced some wealth, they have in most cases 
consumed, used up, in their rich, riotous, wasteful and 
wicked living, not only all the wealth which they them- 
selves may have produced, but many, many times more. 
And having so used up all the wealth his own labor has 
produced, all the wealth that might have belonged to him 
and a great deal more, the average millionaire is as a 
matter-of-fact the really true owner of absolutely 
nothing ! 

He simply holds and controls wealth which he has 
USUrIped from the producers ! That is all ! 

Every dollar taken from ths workers, without an 
equivalent returned, is ROBBERY. It is CONFISCATION ! 

The man who by means of his superior physicial 
strength over-powers his weaker neighbor and takes away 
his coat, thereby perpetrates a w T icked crime. But the 
man who by the indirect, stealthy means of his superior 
cunning or financial strength, monopolizes a certain busi- 
ness and extorts millions from the financially weaker and 
less cunning masses, thereby commits a far more extensive 
and therefore greater and wickeder crime. 

The crime of the physicially strong man causes but very 



49. 

little privation and suffering - , compared with the awful re- 
sults of that crime perpetrated by the man ol superior cun- 
ning and financial strength. In the first case there is only 
one sufferer, but in the second case there may toe thousands 
or even millions of poor, innocent, helpless sufferers ! 

Barring the few very rare, sort-of-accidental-happy- 
streaks-of-luck, all million-dollar accumulations result from 
superior criminal cunning and financial strength. 

The great millionaire possessions of this "Fair Land of 
America " are, for the most part, but confiscated aggrega- 
tions of the down-trod workman's labor! And it behooves 
the common workers, of this country to assert their man- 
hood, rise up en masse as a nation and, as it were, re- 
plevy what righteously belongs to them — replevy all the 
great monopoly and trust industries, such as railways, the 
factories, the mines, etc., etc. They already belong to us 
people ; i. e., the government. And " we people, the gov- 
ernment," should take possession of our OWN property, and 
operate the same, to the equal benefit of all and with 
special privileges to none. But in doing thus, we should, of 
course, be lenient and charitable with the millionaire class, 
the same as we would be with any absurd and wicked class. 
They should be kindly pardoned and allowed to "go in 
peace." True, by their OWN-law-sanctioned system for rob- 
bery they have wrought terrible privations and sufferings 
among the masses. 

But then, they have only done, under the present 
teachings and environments, what ordinary persons will, 
if it chances to be their privilege so to do. 

In that man is too frequently what his environment and 
teachings make him, he is somewhat irresponsible for being 
just what he is and for doing just as he does. The general 
beliefs and faiths of a man's country usuallv enter into and 



50. 

become a part of his education ; hence, if a man's education 
is bad, he may be somewhat excusable. 

Again, a man may, because of his selfishness or greed, 
become imbued with some very bigoted faith or belief. The 
great monopoly king and usurper may really think that he, 
after all, is pretty honest and a good fellow. In his blind 
bigotry, he may think that all is fair in commercial-warfare 
and that when through his cunning ability he succeeds in 
" freezing out " competition, and then by dishonest prices- 
extorts millions from the masses, he is thus leading a right- 
eous (?) life and laying up crowns inside " those pearlly 
gates." 

But he is'a terribly deluded victim of greed — that greed 
which has been enccuraged, goaded, and self-protected > 
that blinding greed or thirst for power, which is but the 
natural outgrowth of existing custom, the present crazy 
man's unscientific custom which not only tolerates but also 

PROMOTES and DEFENDS PRIVATE MONOPOLIES and 
TRUSTS ! And it is not so strange as a person at first 
might suppose, that the millionaire fellows are trying to 
strengthen and perpetuate this crazy-system. 

No, I say, it does not seem so strange, when we consider 
how narrow-minded and cruel the oft-times bigotry and self- 
ishness as displayed by kings, or the bigotry of the once 
supposed or imagined "Devine Right " of kings to rule and 
of those old witchcraft doctrines and also of that not-long- 
ago believed-to-be-right of the white man to enslave his 
black brother. When we briefly refer to the teachings of 
history, it becomes easy for us to understand what a danger- 
ously deceptive and delusive monster general custom, habit 
or public sentiment may be. As history DOES prove, almost 
inconceivable are the appalling, vicious bigotries which may 
be grafted upon the public custom and sentiment. 



51. 

The habit or custom of imagining- that the white race of 
people had the right to buy and sell in slavery the colored 
people did not make it right. And the belief of the "Pil- 
grim Fathers " that, after fleeing from the persecutors of 
the established church of England, they were in turn justifi- 
ed in establishing their code for religious persecution, did 
not make their practice of persecution justifiable. The fact, 
that after the Pilgrims had fled from persecution, they still 
retained some of the follies of bigotry did not prove the same to 
be a virtue, not by any means. The same with witchcraft. 
That old superstition of bigotry which was in vogue for a numb- 
er of centuries and which caused hundreds of innocent people 
to be tortured to death, does not furnish any grounds for the 
defence of such vices. But it does serve to illustrate how 
much the human race, at best, is weak and is always subject 
more or less to the dangers of bigotry, and how vigilant we 
should always be to examine into all the existing habits and 
customs. 

Yes, we should take timely warning from these teach- 
ings of history and always be ready to discriminate between 
the customs that are based on bigotry and those that are 
founded upon righteous logic. And accordingly, let us 
clearly understand that the monopoly kings' habit of think- 
ing or imagining that they have a right to the immense 
wealth of which they have gained possession and control by 
cruel, unjust and dishonest methods, can never make it 
right. 

And it is both the right and duty of "us people, the 
government," to take possession of our own great monopoly 
industries and operate them so as to promote the common 
good. Thus, we may reform the millionaires, civilize them, 
lift them out of their present realm of bigotry and ground 
them upon a more common-sense premise. 



52. 

Since we American people have conquered and subdued 
the u Red men, " we have sought at no small expense to 
civilize and reform them. We have furnished them with 
various means to help themselves gain an honest livelihood. 
And we also seek, not so much to punish, but rather to re- 
form the junior class of white criminals. And to some ex- 
tent we manifest the same charitable spirit toward the older 
criminals. 

And, now then, I don't just exactly mean to compare the 
self-law-sanctioned high .carnival criminals, that is, the 
great millionaire and muiti-millionaire kings of commerce, 
with the poor and petty class that fill the reform schools and 
prisons. But I do mean to say that, after commercially de- 
capitating these high-carnival millionaires, " Uncle Sam 
should, in accordance with his well established disposition, 
extend to them the warm hand of charity. Yes, and the 
common people will without doubt be heartily in favor of 
granting to all such ex-millionaires sufficient aid to afford 
them an opportunity henceforth to earn an honorable live- 
lihood, and live a life becoming honest, upright, useful 
citizens. 

"The rise and decline of civilization may be marked by 
the increase or decrease of " individual-free-holders of-home- 
stead. '"No nation can be truly great where a majority of 
the families are tenants." 

And, therefore, when millionairism and monopolyism 
are overthrown, it will be good discretion to grant to all 
ex-millionaires free-homesteads. 

The wicked extravagant and elaborate mansions in 
which many of these usurpers are now living, may be used 
to very valuable and just purposes in the way of free public 
library buildings, reading and concert rooms, night schools 



53. 

and lecture roo?ns, free public bath-houses, foundling hospi- 
tals, etc., etc. 

This way of dealing with the ex-millionaires, will prac- 
tically parallel the way in which the "American savage" 
has been provided for after being conquered. 

We hold no malice toward the " Red Man " who mends 
his ways. Neither should we lay up anything against the 
ex-millionaire. Both have unwittingly and in a senee un- 
avoidably been very much influenced by bad temptations, 
by bad customs and teachings : and for this reason, they are 
entitled to charity. Of course, the custom of the monopoly 
king, has been to deprive the masses of what should be 
their opportunities to earn and possess comfortable homes ; 
but, then, to "pay him back in his own coin," will avail 
nothing. And the better course will be to give the wicked 
"prodigals " comfortable homes and also other means where- 
by they may engage in some honest, useful toil and suppoit 
themselves in comfort, happiness and independence ; just as 
every worker should be able to do. 

Now then, there are those people who conscientiously 
assert that, "Some millionaires expend all the income they 
receive in works and deeds of charity and philanthropy " 
and that " although they have not acquired the wealth by 
honest methods, it matters not, it is all well enough to let 
them keep it, so long as they use the income for the public 
good." To this, I say that but very few, if auy, use all the 
income for the benefit of the pubbic : and besides this, I be- 
lieve Uncle Sam is the more competent to use this income, 
in promoting the common good of humanity. And theu, we 
must not forget that the wealth really belongs to the com- 
mon workers, the common people, and the people are Uncle 
Sam. 

In the sense that every man belongs to the whole people, 



54. 

he belongs to Uncle Sam ; and even at the risk of his life, 
the man may be forced to do the role of a soldier. Likewise, 
that wealth in the hands of the millionaires and which be- 
longs to the whole people, belongs to Uncle Sam : and in all 
good common sense, it is only just and proper that 
Uncle Sam take such wealth and use it "to promote the 
general welfare." 

Common sense rules of justice do not "place the dollar 
above the man," but under the rules of tyranny it is very 
different. If, instead of the people, the millionaires are the 
government, as is mostly the case now ; then the millionaires 
do " place the dollar above the man ; " then the man belongs 
to the govornment : i. e., to the millionaires, and they may 
use him, at the peril of his life, to defend and if possible 
augument their strongholds. But it is contrary to the 
greed and tyranny of the millionaire and his rules of gov- 
ernment to concede that the people have a claim upon the 
wealth which has been virtually stolen from them. 

When a man with a conscience either blinded or hard- 
ened in that greedy and stupid madness of this bigoted age 
of private monopolies and trusts, steals through the sanc- 
tion of law millions of the country's wealth, Uncle Sam 
should elect him to keep this stolen wealth and use it as 
he chooses ; simply because of the funny idea that, " perhaps 
one out of a dozen of such usurpers may sometime become 
interested in ' "the general welfare of his fellowcitizens. " ' 
As previously suggested, there can be but few if any million- 
aires who are disposed to work for the good of the public. 
And, then, in the case of such a so-called good king-of-wealth,it 
is the same as with an absolute king or monarch ; i. e., how- 
ever good one king, tbe heir to the throne, or to the great 
wealth, is liable to prove to be either the wickedest kind of 



55. 

^ tyrant or a stupid lunatic. He may be a fool or he may 
be a knave. 

TVe may safely trust to the wisdom and integrity of the 
people when it is not safe to put trust in a king. 

Again, there are those who talk a great deal about 
certain "men who have through their great skill and man- 
agement reduced the cost of production, cheapened the 
price to the public, and in so doing captured a large trade 
away from other parties and thereby become millionaires, 
etc.. etc., 

This is only a sample of the many catch-phrase sophis- 
tries which are being made, or rather unconsciously repeat- 
ed, as it were, by a great number of honest working people — 
by both farmers and wage-earners. Such a seemingly simple 
statement, when fully analyzed in its wider and more com- 
plicated meanings, reveals some principles different from 
those which are to be detected by a mere passing considera- 
tion. What on the surface appears to be for the good of the 
public, when examined into proves to be the highest-handed 
robbery. If a person looks only at the surface of such state- 
ments, he is misled into the untrue belief that a man pro- 
motes the welfare of the public, when he shrewdly monopo- 
lizes any particular line of business. He does not realize 
that Mr. Monopolizer lowers prices to the public for the ex- 
press purpose of driving his weaker competitors out of the 
field, and that many of the competitors are thereby driven 
into bankruptcy and that the employees are thus beaten out 
of their jobs. Neither does he realize that just as soon as 
all competitors are vanquished, it is the general custom, 
then, to raise prices to an unfair and dishonest schedule, 
and all this that Mr. Monopolizer may become a millionaire 
at the expense of the general public, saying nothing of the 



56. 

cruel injustice to bankrupt competitors and also to poor 
working people who have thus lost their jobs. 

Since it is a question causing not a few discussions and 
misunderstandings, let us, my friends, examine a little 
further into the patent-right question, already briefly 
touched upon. 

In the first place let it be understood as is shown by 
statistics, that the many modern labor-saying devices of our 
country, were invented and brought to light by men who in 
the majority have died poor. 

I contend, as I shall demonstrate a little further on. that 
the design, or purpose, of the patent laws is to encourage 
the "Yankee " genius to invent and bring to light useful 
labor-saving tools and machinery, so as to facilitate produc- 
tion : so as to make man's labor more productive and thereby 
more remunerative ; so as to enable man to produce more 
and thereby acquire, consume and enjoy far more of the 
comforts and good things of this life than what would be 
possible without the labor-saving devices. The purpose of 
the patent laws is to encourage such labor-saving inventions 
as will enable people to live with less hard toil and at the 
same time enjoy more comforts and pleasure s and thereby 
make more of themselves, live higher, better and happier 
lives. The authorized purpose of the patent laws is to 
help bring about such conditions as will enable the wage- 
worker to produce more and receive better prices for his- 
work, a better price for a shorter day's work; and enable 
the farmers to till the soil with less labor and expense and 
at the same time sell their products for prices sufficient to 
afford them more of the good things of life, that they may. 
live happier lives. Ultimately, the only authorized purpose 
of the patent laws, is to promote the people's happi- 
ness, not to promote cunning, scheming millionaire mono- 



57. 

polizers and usurpers and gratify their morbid greed and 
selfishness, but to promote the prosperity and happiness of 
all the people by increasing or multiplying the rewards of 
every man's honest toil. When the government takes pos- 
session and operates, for the equal happiness of all the peo- 
ple, the monopoly and trust enterprises which have become 
possible mainly as a result of the machine-inventions 
which the patent laws have encouraged ; then the purpose 
of those laws will be materially realized. 

It is not the inventor, the great benefactor of mankind, 
who has discovered and made available to man's happiness 
the countless labor-saving devices — no it is not the inventor 
that is oppressing the people. The inventor who studies and 
devises facilities for promoting the happiness of his fellow- 
citizens is not engaged in any crafty conspiracies to monopo- 
lize industries and plunder the common toilers. 

But in the Mr. Monopolizer who becomes the propri- 

tor of a patent by purchasing the right from the inventor, 

we have a rather complicated question ; and to examine into 

this question properly we must go back to the constitution 

itself, whereby congress has power to enact patent laws. 

And, now, then, in establishing the constitution, the 
" fathers " had in view six distinct, though correlative, pur- 
poses. And those six purposes, which are strictly harmoni- 
ous, are set forth in the preamble, which reads as follows : 

"We, the people of the United States, in order to form 
a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic 
transquility, provide for the common defense, promote the 
general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to our- 
selves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this con- 
stitution for the United States of America." 

And so we learn from this preamble that the objects 



58. 

and purposes in establishing the constitution were to 

1. " Form a more perfect union. 

2. Establish justice. 

3. Insure domestic tranquility. 

4. Provide for the common defense. 

5. Promote the general welfare. 

6. Secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our 
posterity." 

And now, since the founders of this government, our 
" fore-fathers," designed that the constitution should "pro- 
mote the general welfare," they surely did not in any way 
hope or intend for it to injure "the general welfare." In 
fact, the five other purposes for which they ordained and estab- 
lished the constitution, harmonizes with and makes for ( not 
against) this one great purpose ; i. e., "to promote THE 

GENERAL WELFARE ! " 

"To form a more perfect union," was to make for 
"the general welfare ; " "to establish justice, " was for " the 
general welfare, " or general good;" "to insure domestic 
tranquility," makes for "general welfare, " or for every 
one's good; "to provide for the common defense," was for 
"the general welfare, " for the good of all ; and "to secure the 
blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity," was also 
for " the general welfare." 

So, we see that the one most important purpose of the 
constitution is "to promote the general welfare," and we al- 
so see that every other purpose is in harmony with this 
leading purpose — "the general welfare." 

Webster says .that general means, "relating to the 
whole community ;" "having a relation to all ; " hence "the 
general welfare " means, "the welfare of the whole com- 
munity," or a "welfare " " having a relation to all." "The 
general welfare " does not imply "the welfare " of any ex- 



59. 

elusive, privileged class, but means "the welfare " of every 
citizen. 

After all, "general welfare" virtually means general 
happiness ; and broadly speaking, the ultimate purpose of 
the constitution itself is to promote general happiness, 
to secure the greatest happiness, to the greatest 
number. Hence, as before stated, the only authorized 
(constitutional) purpose of the patent laws is to promote the 
people's happiness. And surely, to help enslave the 
masses to a comparatively few private monopolies and 
trusts, cannot serve very materially to increase "the gener- 
al happiness." 

Any construction or interpretation of the constitution 
which implies a purpose to run counter to "the general wel- 
fare " or to the happiness and well-being of the masses, is 
absolutely contrary to what our "fore-fathers" plainly de- 
clared was their PRIME object in establishing the constitu- 
tion. 

And if there be any law upon the U. S. statute books 
which, in its effect, does not harmonize with "the general 
welfare," then that law conflicts with the design and intent 
of the constitution ; that law is contrary to authorized pur- 
pose ; that law is not authorized by any one of the purposes 
for which the constitution was ordained and established ; 
that law is subversive of those sacred purposes for which the 
constitution exists ; that law is unconstitutional, without 
proper authority, null and void, and should be so decreed. 
Nothing but a most cavilous stretch of the imagination, 
could construe or interpret any clause of the constitution as 
properly authorizing that which is in direct opposition to 
the very sacred purposes for which that instrument was 
framed and established. 

And, so far as the patent laws have been instrumental 



60. 

(if they have — I don't say they have) in helping to build 
up private monopolies which rob the masses and work 
against "the general welfare ; " so far, those laws are con- 
trary to their authorized purpose, and in such respect, they 
are unconstitutional. 

If any millionaires claim that the patent laws justify their 
possession and control of millions of Wealth, then they seek 
to shield themselves behind a law which they are pleased to 
interpret as being greater than and subversive of the con- 
stitution ; and thus they would seek protection behind un- 
constitutional law ; they would trample upon the constitu- 
tion — which means a degenerate move toward a "Reign of 
Terror." 

It is, nevertheless, both the right and the duty of Uncle 
Sam to reclaim all confiscated wealth which the usurpers 
may assert they have acquired through the sanction and 
protection of the patent laws. Any wealth which has been 
acquired through unlawful, unconstitutional means should be 
returned to the true owners. 

Moreover, it is in all cases, the right of every people to 
see that their government is solely for "the general wel- 
fare ; " not for the benefit of any privileged class at the ex- 
pense of the masses. And aside and alone, from this con- 
stitutional-and-jjatent-law phase of the issue : 

If a government operates against "the general wel- 
fare," it is not only the right of the people to reform that 
government, but it is equally their inherent right to correct 
and, by "replevin " and by any other suitable means, to 
cure as far as possible every injustice that has been inflicted 
upon "the general welfare;" and, for me this great right- 
eous principle is sufficient to overcome any and every op- 
posing argument. 

And now, inasmuch as a people have a right to correct 



61. 

and recover for any injustice inflicted upon " the general 
welfare;" so the American workers have an inherent 
right to reclaim all the wealth which the usurpers have 
dishonestly acquired. 



62. 



CHAPTER V. 

The man who may be so lost in delusion as to think the 
millionaires honestly earn and acquire the immense incomes 
which they enjoy in their profligate way, should just suppose- 
they were to be penned up for a short time. Fence them all 
in together, alone by themselves and away from the people 
who now labor, and even allow them to keep all the property 
that they have confiscated from the honest toilers. What 
would become of them ? Could they, while so situated, con- 
tinue to pull upon their monopoly-and-trust- wires and rob 
the masses of a large part of the fruits of their toil ? Or, if 
before they acquired these immense possessions, these usurp- 
ers had been fenced in alone and away from all useful toil- 
ers where there were no wage-slaves and farmers to produce 
wealth for them and to serve and wait upon them : then, 
how would they have managed to acquire the vast fortunes 
they now control ? 

Build a high wall — so high that there can be no inter- 
course over it. Put the people who now depend on their 
work and labor on one side by themselves, and all the mil- 
lionaires on the other side by themselves ; and you would 
then have the millionaires about as they belong, and they 



63. 

would have — somewhat the same as we common people — 
to knuckle down and hustle to get enough to eat. 

And that is just what they should have to do. Every 
manually able "body" should " HUSTLE" for his own 
living. 

What would become of the people on the other side of 
the wall ? 

By following the "devine precept," "Do unto others as 
you would have others do unto you," by establishing a true 
brotherhood or pure democracy, they never would miss capital. 
Capital is but the product of labor ! Were all capital to 
be destroyed, labor would soon replace it ! But without 
labor capital would go to ruin ! Capital without labor can 
accomplish nothing ! 

But labor alone, when segregated from capital and free 
from the existing tyranny of private monopolies and trusts, 
will accomplish far more than what is now possible, under 
the domination of the present greed and avarice of capital. 

" The Labor Exchange (in many works fully elaborated) 
would answer all the purposes of capital and money." And 
if they on the one side of the wall, did not give away the 
bounties of nature, the mines, the forests, etc., the franchises 
and the like — if they enacted just laws they never would 
have any millionaires. 

And if these '"nice fellows" (?) would take all their 
confiscated possessions and go away and leave us, we would 
get along very well ; but they insist on staying among us 
and eventually transacting all the business through their 
trusts and monopoly-corporations. 

The small capitalists being, under the present customs, 
unable to establish themselves and compete ; if these 



64 

customs continue, we must all sooner or later become corpor- 
ation-hirelings ! 

There is no escape ! 

The corporations have NOW under their despotic rule 
all the great transportation, communication, manufacturing 
a net mining facilities. 

The department store is absorbing the little retailer, 
and many of them will soon be bankrupts. They will all 
wither away like green leaves after a killing frost. Scarcely 
any of them see their fate yet. But mark you, when it 
comes, these very men, now the most conservative of all, 
will then be the bitterest fees of this wicked commercial 
warfare. 

When they have absorbed the retail business, as they 
have many others, these gigantic corporations will grab for 
the farms. 

They will get possession of large tracts of cheap lands, 
through enforced mortgage-sales and by other similar 
methods, which with special railway, or shipping privileges, 
will aiford them advantages against which you smaller 
farmers cannot compete. A number of the privileged mil- 
lionaire classes have already begun this course. And as 
sure as fate, you very farmers, yourselves must yet be driven 
from business and crowded to the wall by these nefarious 
combines, unless their kingdom is dethronged. 

I tell you what it is, my friends, this is a world-wide 
question ! 

It is a question that bodes the future " weal or woe of 
the human race, throughout countless generations. 

Which shall it be ? 

At the present day, these privileged millionaire classes 
are appropriating to oheir own use at least one-half the 
labor of all the people in the whole civilized world. 



65. 

And what are these fellows giving us in return for it '? 

Frowns of contempt ! Ridicule ! Scorn ! 

In their estimation, as it would seem, we are naught, 
• "contemptible slaves! " 

We are half-slave ! 

And our masters are not Jike many of the "kind ones 
of old, who encouraged the slaves in their petty pleasures, 
nourished them in their sickness and cared for them in their 
.old age." Ours are the masters who usually "know no 
mercy: Avho know no God ! but the god of greed ; the masters 
who care not for us when we are sick and who will not even 
decently bury us when we are dead, much less minister to 
-our wants and needs in our declining years," but leave us to 
the, per chance, tender mercies of charity or to the unkind 
^humiliating provisions of the law. 

Our masters are the kind of fellows who sit and bask, at 
OUR expense, in those magnificant homes, those private 
Palaces, furnished with every luxury that human mind can 
wish or caprice can devise. And there with their hearts 
like stone, their profligate pleasures are unabated, as they 
watch us in our bitter struggle along life's road, leading not 
a few of us to the poor-house ! 

"The words of the immortal Lincoln are as true today 
as when they were uttered : ' "This nation cannot long ex- 
ist half-slave and half-free ; ' " and in having all the com- 
mon people half-slave the dangers to the republic are greater 
\ han in having half the people total-slave and the other 
half free, " 

Chattle-slavery, negro-slavery, did house, clothe and 
feed the slave, and it also provided him with medical attend- 
ance. 

TVage-slavery cares not, whether the slave lives or dies, 
stays or goes ! 



66. 

Look into the great cities where there are frequently so* 
many of the unemployed, who with empty flour barrels are- 
but too eager to take the places of any of their brother wage- 
slaves, who may be either deceased or discharged. 

Through existing conditions of commercial life, the 
masters who are on the inside of the trusts, are, not only a 
sort of a class of leeches feasting upon all the common and 
middle classes : but they are, ultimately, their own 
enemies. Seemingly steeped in their methods of blind in- 
iquity, they are, as it were, seeking to "kill the goose that 
lays the golden egg." Generally, their God is the god of 
greed!" They worship the avariciousness of organized 
wealth. With many of them, practically, "all the higher 
attributes, all the finer sensibilities, are lost, or stupefied, in 
the brutal, greedy scramble for material wealth and the 
power which it brings. They learn to look upon the men 
and women with whom they come in contact, not as fellow 
human beings with common rights and common hopes, but 
either as legitimate prey or as subjects to be feared and 
guarded against." 

In brief, they become what they, themselves term "busi- 
ness-men." And in their decalogue, "you can't be a busi- 
ness-man and a humanitarian at the same time." They 
say "business and humanitarianism " is hard to mix. They 
tend to destroy each other. And so, "if you expect to suc- 
ceed as a business-man, you must carefully lay your human- 
itarianism away where the moths won't get at it, and bring 
it out only when your minister makes a professional call or 
on similar occasions." "You must strive to monopolize- 
some gigantic machine-power industry and having accom- 
plished this, then combine with other monopolies for the 
purpose of controlling the labor market. And, then, if the 
wages you choose to pay men will not support the family. 



6T. 

you can employ women and children,, since many machines 
can be tended by them." 

"Although, woman's natural place is in the home, there 
are today 4,000,000 women in the United States who are em- 
ployed outside of the home." 

"Many of these women become discouraged with their lot 
of poverty and go to recruit the ranks of the outcast army." 
" But what is that to us millionaires ? We are living in this 
age of private monopolies and trusts,, and while the system 
lasts we will reap the harvests." 

"Today nearly half of the 14,000,000 children of school 
age in the country, are not in school, most of them being at 
work. Many cf them are working under-ground in the coal 
mines." "In many instances,, both women and children in 
this great proline land, that should be an eden in the uni- 
verse, are being worked to the limit of existence." "They 
know that we expect of them a certain amount of work, and 
that unless they perform so much work, they will lose their 
jobs." "They lose all healthful energy of both body and 
mind. Their brains are so stupefied as to be incapable of 
clear thinking, and one who mingles with these people soon 
discoveres how they are wrecked in both mind and body." 
" While it is a point of honor with soldiers not to make 
war upon women and children, in our decalogue, we need 
have no scruples of conscience to inflict our slow-murdering 
process upon poor weak women and helpless, innocent 
children." 

"With us millionaires, the question of what to do with 
the income one receives, becomes a serious one. To spend 
it upon personal comforts or luxuries would,, of course, be al- 
most impossible, no matter how lavish the outlay. And, 
really, be the actual millionaire 'business-men,' these ma 
terial comforts are comparatively of little account. To the 



68. 

common working people they mean much : but to the mil- 
lionaire himself, the sense of cruel, wicked power and suc- 
cess which great wealth brings, is more than anything else ; 
and it is this that, in a sense, intoxicates him and generally 
makes him continue life-long his adroit processs of usurpa- 
tion. 

"Most of what a millionaire quite frequently does, he 
does, not so much for the purpose of obtaining means that 
will serve to gratify his own personal desires or wants and 
needs, either present or future ; but he rather does ' this and 
that ' for the purpose of furthering his own powers, for the 
purpose of advancing, generally, the powers of his class as 
against the rights of the masses. 

And with this object in view, to increase and strengthen 
the powers of his class to rule and dominate over the corn- 
toilers, he may sometimes endow a college, library or 
church. As previously suggested, he may do this to tie them 
up, to control or influence the economic or religious doc- 
trines that are taught. In short he may endow colleges and 
churches in order to cajole the common people with false, 
delusive teachings, in order to imbue the public mind with 
false religious dogmas. Colleges and churches are more or 
less influential institutions. 

College presidents and preachers sometimes like money, 
and we millionaires like inhuence. They have the influ- 
ence and we hold the money. We may exchange. That is, 
we may pay their salaries, and they can and will defend us. 
Lrtemus Ward said, so this is a simple case of, ''You 
scratch my back and I'll scratch yours." 

These churches and colleges are, of course. ,not supposed 
to understand anything of the law-sanctioned methods by 
which we millionaires plunder the working people and thus 
compel them indirectly to pay these churches and colleges 



69. 

for teaching them falsely. In fact this education and re- 
ligion is what we call the automatic kind. And we ex 
our churches and colleges to be very profuse in proclaiming 
that ' conservative ' and grown-to-be thread-bare, as it were, 
code of morals which, briefly speaking runs about as follows: 
''Model boy: widowed mother: honest poverty: boy gets 
employment in near-by factory : boy gains proprietor's favor; 
joins same church : finally marries employer's daughter and 
succeeds to the management and ownership of the entire 
business ; becomes a rich man, a monopoly-king and kind (?) 
religious ruler over the poor ignorant wage-slaves out of 
whose menial toil he makes millions of honest ( ? ) dollars, 
with which he endows colleges and churches, and founds 
libraries, a bright and shining light for other model boys 
with widowed mothers, etc., etc." 

'The working class taken all together are many times 
stronger than we. their masters who are on the inside of the 
trusts, and we could not make them obey us in a fair even- 
handed contest. But we know better than to engage in such 
contest. We have a better way. We control many of the 
schools, the churches, the newspapers and most of the book 
publishing houses ; so you see, we control most of the places 
from which most of the people get their ideas. Thus we can. 
and do succeed quite well in making people think that to 
act and to believe in the way that most pleases us, ' their 
masters,' is ' good ' and that to believe and to do what is best 
for themselves is 'bad.' 

So we set the common x^eople to work, in their imagina- 
tions, building up pictures of another world that they t 
go to when they depart this life, provided they give up try- 
ing to be happy or make each other happy here, and stop 
thinking ab^ut having pleasanter work or better food or any- 
thing else they naturally want and should have, just believe 



70. 

what we have the colleges and churches tell them. And, of 
course, we have the professors, the preachers, the news- 
papers, the books, etc., tell the people all about how sacred 
are the rights (?) of us millionaires to possess and control 
the wealth that we have confiscated, and also how that 
every American worker must deem it his patriotic duty to 
be always ready to become a soldier and risk his own life in 
defense of we millionaires' cunning, dishonest claim to the 
people's wealth." 

"Now, this sort of teaching just suits the purpose of us 
masters. The common menial workers serve us much better 
when they are taught that God made some people rich and 
some people poor, because He wished to have them so, and 
that to please God, the poor people must take no thought of 
worldly pleasures and comforts." 

"We learn that false and superstitious religious teach- 
ings are the most effectual means yet devised for cajoling and 
deluding the workers into servile submission. For any 
good, consistent, common-sense religion we have no use ! 
In order to play our games to best advantage, we must have 
the people somewhat under superstition. Get a man on his 
superstition, and you can handle him, when he could not be 
handled by any other methods. Hence, we antagonize all 
pure religions and seek to drive them from the land. It's 
BUSINESS, YOU KNOW ? " 

Venerable pastors, if you want to know who are keeping 
the working men out of the church and why the working 
men have so little faith in the church, look a little closer and 
see how many of the fellows who make the lot of the working 
men so hard, occupy high places of honor and influence in 
the church, how the churches are dominated with dollars, 
and you will find what are driving the working people from 
the church. 



71- 

" To make the poor and innocent good and honest, where 
l.he rich, powerful and cunning are dishonest and vicious, is 
to place goodness at a serious disadvantage. To teach the 
jpoor patience and innocence in the midst of craft and cruelty, 
is to furnish the red-mouthed wolves (the tyrant rich) with 
wooly bleating lambs. Hence, the grip of the churches up- 
on humanity, has been steadily lessening ; for men perman- 
ently love only those things that are beneficial to them." 

i4 Why labor to save one soul and then condone those in- 
justices that are crushing millions into sin ? You are pluck- 
ing brands from a constantly increasing conflagration. The 
flames continue to advance and devour what you thought 
you had saved. 

" In what do religious duties consist, if not in doing 
justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make others hap- 
py ? From a christian standpoint, is it not true that man 
serves himself best by promoting the common good ? Is it 
for the common good that the nation be composed of anta- 
gonistic hereditary classes? " 

Why does the church so frequently throw its influence 
on the side of such economic principles as will best serve to 
strengthen the rule of the capitalist class ? "Jesus most em- 
phatically condemned the robbing of the poor by the rich. 
It was probably this which led to his cruiciliction at the de- 
mand of the ruling classes of his own nation." 

The painful silence of the pulpit in regard to the cruel 
oppressions of private monopolies and trusts, should drive 
the common people from the church . should make the 
church loose it hold upon the people. 

The clear-headed thinkers among the working people 
.cannot but despise the church, when its influence is so 
frequently on the side of whatever will best serve to 
strengthen the rule of the capitalist class. 



O ! no ! " The church is not to blame for what its people 
do." But when the capitalist class dictate what the chu 
teaches ; then, to all material purposes and results, the capi- 
talists are the church. And this, the more intelligent class- 
of American workers are not slow to see. 

It may be said, ''Then, why don't the working people 
establish churches that will preach more in support of 
Christianity and less in support of tyranny '? ■- To this, I say 
that the working people, while under the reign of private 
monopolies, have already too many burdens to bear without 
building and supporting more churches. In fact, to attempt 
to reform the church, with a view to using it as an agency 
for reforming the government, would be misguided and 
wasted energy. The working man who clearly understands 
the situation will have but little to do with churches, sucb 
as churches are. By letting them alone he will find it rnucfct 
easier to live a natural, consistent life, a life that is free^ 
from superstition while it emulates the " Golden Rule." 

The church does not overthrow kingcraft, but with the 
overthrow of such a vice the church generally undergoes a 
reformation. With the downfall of witchcraft, the churcli 
passed through a sort of metamorphosis. Ditto in regard to* 
many other cruel absurdities. 

So let history repeat itself. 



73. 



CHAPTER VI. 

As with the votaries of old, who worshiped under the 
rules of king-craft and witchcraft, so with the masters of the 
present-day trusts ; so with their most extreme graduates, or 
complements — the unthrifty, unfortunate poorer anarchists ;- 
and so with all the common and middle classes; as a rule, 
ALL are unknowing and somewhat irresponsible CREATURES 
OF CIRCUMSTANCES — products of environment. 

The fellows who are on the inside of the trusts, like 
their brother anarchists who are on the outside, they are 
generally bad fellows, are, as a rule, dangerous charact- 
ers ; not that it is altogether natural for them to be such evil 
characters, but it is because of their evil environments, be- 
cause of the grown r to-be cruel methods by which commerce 
and industry are manipulated, because of the evil school in 
which they have been educated to the parts they are now 
playing. The political economists and the politicians of this 
and every other country have generally magnified the im- 
portance of capital. They have exalted capital above labor. 
Yet it is quite generally understood how the amassment of 
great wealth may tend to corrupt the seat of the affections.. 
may tend to beget avarice, to banish charity from the human 
heart and dethrone God from the empire of the human souL 



74. 

If a man associates among pugilists, his ambition will be to 
develop his muscular powers and excel in fistic encounters. 
When money or wealth is the key to power, men naturally 
strive, above all else, to possess treasures of gold. In the sense 
that wealth is the magic wand of power in the world, pover- 
ty is made a mark of reproach. Poverty is to be much 
dreaded for the reason that it causes so much sorrow and so 
many agonies, such as tend to spoil the better morals of the 
strongest character. In order to escape poverty men will 
resort to every means. Unless they are endowed with the 
most righteous religious sentiments, they will pursue un- 
scrupulous methods. The fact is the two extremes, abject 

POVERTY and UNREASONABLE WEALTH, BOTH HAVE A DE- 
MORALIZING infuence. Miserable poverty and great 
wealth are correlatives. Millionaires virtually necessitate 
pauper-workers, and vice versa. The one is essential to the 
other. So, to abolish one will practically do away with the 
other. 

We understand how, for instance. "A river may be 
beautiful and wholesome when it is fed by mountain streams 
.and runs over a pebbly bed, between grassy meadows shaded 
with stately trees: but not so when it is polluted wfth city 
sewers, its bed is slime, and its banks are lined with garbage 
heaps." Accordingly, a people may be either good or bad, 
according to conditions and circumstances. 

Shrewd, brainy men, may be a great boon, a great 
blessing to their fellow-men, a great blessing to their coun- 
try, when their business principles are guided and moulded, 
when they are educated, under the influence of a just and 
correct commercial-and-industrial system : but not so when 
their business systems have become polluted, so to speak, 
under the legalized-robber teachings of private corporations, 
monopolies and trusts, 



75. 

Men are. in a remarkable degree, ereatures of circum- 
stances, and in such respect, they are excusable. So the 
people who are in the trusts are not to be censured simply 
because they are in the trust business. They may be in the 
business rather because of existing conditions. "When 
men live among Romans, it rather behooves them to do as 
Romans do. ' ' 

And when a man lives among legal-robbers, he may 
think it proper to perpetrate legal robbery. Under such 
circumstances we may concede to hold him as being some- 
what excusable. Hence we can blame these trust magnates 
only (and we do blame them) for using their utmost in- 
fluence to defend and prolong the existing evil system. 

" Miss Helen Gould is a most excellent young woman, 
and has great wealth at her disposal. She did not accumu- 
late it, but inherited it ; and there is no disposition to cen- 
sure or criticise her, because of those immense possessions, 
but the wealth which she controls is the product of 
WRONG ! It would far better have been left in the hands of 
those from whom her father wrested it. Such vast for- 
tunes can never be cleared of the infamy of the methods of 
their acquisition, by any baggarly plan of partial restitu- 
tion." Korean such an inheritance of confiscated posses- 
sions give or establish an honorable claim to them. Either 
to bequeath or to sell confiscated wealth, does not convey 
any valid title or right to such wealth. The people from 
whom such wealth has been confiscated or stolen, are still 
the rightful owners of that wealth. And common-sense 
justice must permit such rightful owners to obtain possession 
of their own property. 

True, many of the persons whose honest labor created 
the wealth, are now dead, and even the living ones from 
whom the wealth was extorted cannot be found and identi- 



76. 

fied, and, even if they could, it would be impossible to de- 
termine the value of the real honest claim of each. So it is 
with all millionaire possessions. The true and rightful 
owners thereof, that is, the producers, cannot be definitely lo- 
cated or named. And in cases of wealth whereof the right- 
ful owners cannot be found nor any heirs, either, then, the 
commonweal quite naturally succeeds to the ownership, and, 
if true justice prevails, it (the common-wealth) takes pos- 
session. Under the common-sense justice, the government 
always succeeds to the ownership of wealth that has no per- 
sonal or private owners. 

The government succeeds to the ownership op 
all millionaire possessions ; and when the common 
people control the government, let us hope, then, 
the millionaires must give up their ill-gotten 
possessions. 



77. 



CHAPTER VII. 

"Oh! Yes!'* some people say, "We know that the 
trusts and monopolies are robbing the country, and at a ter- 
rible rate : but, then, don't you know there is no use of your 
talking so much about it — it can't be helped ? " And "You 
shouldn't be telling the rising generation of these terrible 
evils, for it makes them pessimistic, you know." And, 
"Even though it isn't true, we want the rising generation to 
think that, 'everything is lovely and the goose hangs 
high. " ' • • We want to prevent their seeing these evils and 
try to make them think that there are some commendable 
features about these monopolies and trusts. We want them 
to be optimists. You are arraying class against class ; and 
you shouldn't do so." 

Ah ! Yes ! 

But, my friends, if we are thus to teach optimism with 
such a vengence, why not consider the highwayman from 
your so-called " optimistic " standpoint? Why not tell our 
young people that there are commendable points about these 



fellows, if we are to tell them thus about these thieving; 
monopolies, corporations and trusts ? That bold, daring and 
unflinching courage with which the bank-robber ' plies his- 
trade, is, to say the least, none inferior to some of the cow- 
ardly scheming methods of millionaire trusts and corpora- 
tions. You surely approve of arraying the people against 
the highwayman ; and as far as arraying the trusts and cor- 
porations against the people, WE don't do that. They (the 
trusts, etc., ) attend to that themselves. 

The trusts, corporations and monopolies are continually 
combining and stealthily arraying themselves against the 
common people ; and at the same time, they are also slyly 
scheming and devising ways and means for disorganizing 
and disturbing the mutually peaceful relations and interests 
of the working classes. 

It is the scheme of the oppressors to destroy, as far as 
possible, all federations of labor, trades-unions, etc., and so 
to stir up strife and hatred among the poor working people, 
that they may be fighting each other, when they should be 
mutually united and arrayed against the privileged million- 
aire classes and ready on opportune occasions to strike the 
cruel, crafty enemies with righteous and telling blows. 

Between the trusts and the highwayman or bank-rob- 
bers there is one remarkable difference not always consider- • 
ed in its full significance. As a rule the highwayman robs 
the rich, but with the monopolies and trusts, the general 
rule is to rob the poor ! 

We should make no very material distinction between 
the mid-night burglar who enters the banker's premises and 
loots his treasures and the railroad robber who wrongfully 
appropriates the products of the farmer's and wage- worker's 
toil. In fact, the latter is even more wicked and in just- 
common-sense-law he is more criminal, because the railroad 



king steals so much more from the poor people than what 
the burglar steals from the rich. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

Some peop]e question the propriety of trades-unions, 
.etc, claiming that it is just as wrong for labor to combine as 
it is for capital. And, in fact, the best that can be said of 
private combines or monopolies in whatever line, is that they 
seem, ultimately, to be of a crazy-man's system, A combine 
or monopoly in one line of industry, incites or provokes peo- 
ple who are interested in other lines of business to attempt 
£lso to combine and secure a monopo]y in their own line. 
When one man secures a monopoly or when a number of 
men combine and so secure a monopoly on any one industry 
or commodity ; then, almost everybody is made anxious (and 
excusably so) to get a monopoly on something. As already 
suggested, so long as we tolerate the present system or 
custom that permits and condones private monopolies and 
trusts : so long every man is partially excusable for engag- 
ing in the monopoly business, " as best he can." 

The wrong is not so much in taking advantage of the 
system, but the great and inexcusable wrong is in 
legalizing and thus condoning and protecting the CRUEL 
demoralizing customs of private monopolies. 

When there are the railway monopolies and pools, the 
telegraph companies, the steel combines, the oil trust, the 



81. 

sugar trust, the tobacco trust, he meat trust, etc., etc. ; the 
farmers quite naturally wish they could form a trust, too, 
and the laborers also wish that they could form a labor 
trust. 

But if the rich did not combine, then farmers and labor- 
ers would not attempt to do so. The rich are virtually re- 
sponsible for all the vices of private monopolies and trusts; 
because they are the infuential people who uphold and 
defend the evil custom of permitting them to exist ; and also 
because they are the first to combine and establish a trust 
or monopoly. 

Since the purpose of the millionaire trust or monopoly, 
is to surpress competition and establish dishonest extortion- 
ate prices, no doubt the labor unions and farmers would be 
tempted to do the same if it were possible ; but it is not possi- 
ble for you farmers to form a farmers' trust that will prove 
effectual. There are so many of you farmers that you can- 
not successfully combine. The millionaire classes KNOW 
you farmers cannot successfully combine or form a trust, 
and they also know that such is the case with the wage- 
workers. They (the workers) are also so numerous that 
they cannot form a labor trust (labor union) that would be 
able to suppress competition so as to establish a dishonest 
and extortionate wage-scale. Were it possible for the 
farmers to combine as effectually as the millionaires do, and 
also possible for the laborers to do so, then the millionaires 
would have no further use for the present private monopoly- 
and-trust system. 

If it were possible for the workers, the producers, to 
combine as effectually as the wealthier capitalists do, think 
what a system it would be. Why, we would then, indeed, 
have a sort of a crazy-clock system. 

Suppose such a system were to have been put in opera- 
tion on the first day of January, 1901. 



82. 

Now, my friends, you may not think just the same about? 
this as I do, but if you will only reflect upon it a little, I be- 
lieve you will then look at it the same as I do. 

On New Year's day, 1901, the labor trust would probably 
have held an official meeting and raised the workmen's 
wages; on the same day, the farmers' trust would have' 
raised the price of wheat, corn, beef, pork and all other y 
produce ; the railroad monopolies would try to get the better 
of the farmers and for that purpose raise the price of trans-' 
portation and care-fare ; and so every monopoly and trust ia 
the land would be particularly anxious to get above the? 
farmers and wage-workers, and, with that object in view,, 
they would all advance their prices. On the following: 
day, the farmers' trust and also the labor-trust, finding: 
themselves still at a disadvantage, they would again raise? 
their prices ; the railroads' the steel trusts, the sugar trusty 
etc., etc., would follow suit and again raise their prices^ 
Thus, the crazy-like system of raising prices could move- 
along like clock-work. Each succeeding day might witness* 
higher and higher prices all around the board, but no ad- 
justment of the difficulties, nor any prospect of ending the* 
strikes. 

A little thought along these lines reveals a rather ridic- 
ulous state of affairs, for which the existing system and those" 
who uphold it are responsible. This private-monopoly sys- 
tem is fraught with many vices. Primarily, the object of a* 
monopoly or trust is dishonest and cruel. It is the purpose 
of the strong to plunder the weak. It is the scheme of the 
shrewd or cunning to swindle the innocent. The plan of 
the rich to rob the poor. But the purpose of the labor- 
union, or so-called labor-trust, and also the purpose of the 
organized farmers, or "The Alliance," is for mutual pro- 
tection, is to pay the common enemy, as far as possible, u iu 



83. 

their own coin." As a rule, wealth combines in mono- 
polies and trusts in order to defraud the working 
classes. Labor combines to defend and guard against 

these LEGAL-ROBBERIES. 

While many of us bitterly condemn this present system, 
because we claim it is a bad one, because we claim it is a 
very evil system; you know that many of our opposing 
friends say that the existing system is a good one, that it is 
just about all right. And one of the favorite arguments of 
those who approve of the existing conditions is the theory of 
the survival-of-the-fittest. They tell us that the monopolistic 
or trust system through which the privileged millionaire 
classes are taking such cruel, dishonest advantages of all the 
common people and robbing the country — yes, they will tell 
us that this system is simply a proper means for carrying 
out those principles of the survival-of-the-fittest doctrine. 
But, as it seems to me, if this doctrine were true, the trusts 
and corporations would die off. But this is something they 
are not doing very fast. On the contrary, we have to face 
the stern reality that rascality and money almost always 
outstrip honesty and brains. Industry and self-sacrifiee are 
very often poor where idleness and selfishness are often rich, 
where laziness and greed reap honor and wealth. And I 
should think that the man who accepts this survival-of-the- 
fittest doctrine would let his garden run wild, so that the 
roses and pansies might fight it out with the thistles and the 
" fittest survive." 

I rather regard this so-called survival-of-the-fittest doc- 
trine as but another term for confusion or anarchy. 

i 'There is quite a common belief to the effect, that if 
the poor were sober, industrious and thrifty, they would 
cease to be poor. Now, then, it is quite true, that a sober 
man will succeed better than a tippler. Eut, though quite 



84. 

contrary to a very popular opinion, the sober man's better 
success is more because of the fact that the other fellow 
drinks than because of his own sobriety." " Suppose there 
are ten clerks in an office, nine of whom are ud steady and 
one steady. The steady man will very likely become head 
clerk ; though not so much because he is steady, but nine 
points to one, it is because of the fact that his associates are 
not steady. Were all his brother clerks steady like himself, 
then instead of having- every chance for promotion he would 
have only one chance in ten." 

"And so we must not suppose that because a sober and 
industrious man will succeed in some trades better than a 
drunken lazy man, that therefore the whole trade would 
succeed better by all becoming abstainers and hard workers. 
Look at the Hindoos. They are among the most abstemious 
.and industrious people in the world, and yet they are the 
poorest-paid people in the world." 

Again, many people assert that, "If a man is only de- 
termined to succeod he will succeed." But this is not true, 
nor does it prove that these qualities of energy, talent and 
self-denial which enable one man to improve his conditions, 
would enable all to improve their conditions. For the one man 
succeeds only because of his superior strength and skill or 
good luck ; and if all men displayed strength and skill equal 
to his, he, himself could not so easily rise." 

"Suppose there is a lire-panic in a theater and a mad 
scramble to get through the doorways, the stronger men 
may force their escape by trampling over the weaker ones. 
Imagine their saying : ' Those weaker ones, too, might 
have escaped, had they b?en equally strong ;' while if they 
had, many of the strong fellows who did escape would have 
failed." But, if, instead of the so-called survival-of-the-iit- 
test method, if instead of this anarchic method, they all had 



85. 

pursued and orderly, systematic course of exit ; then all un- 
doubtedly would have made good their escape. 

And so it is with the present commercial life. 

In the business world today, nearly all is a sort of a panic, 
a mad scramble for the "mighty dollar.'' The popular 
modernly-endowed colleges and churches uphold and defend 
our present system of every-man-fcr-himself-and-the-weak- 
est-to-the-wali and in the survival-of-the-victor style, the 
stronger ones in order to succeed are, in the commercial or 
industrial sense, trampling down the weaker ones. 

The colleges and churches are teaching or at least they 
assume to teach the doctrines of economics, of Christianity, 
of righteousness: the doctrines of a true brotherhood: and yet 
slavery is about as rampant as ever, it seems to be only the 
forms of oppression that have changed. At any rate, in our 
land at this day, a few of the industrially, commercially 
strong men have so clutched at the sources of wealth that 
millions of people cannot get work at honest and deserving- 
prices, and as a consequence, many of those working at pov- 
erty-reducing rates are devoid of both peace of mind and 
health of body. 

The monopoly kings not only oppress the poor, but they 
blind many of them to their real condition, holding out to 
them the wicked hope, that they, too (the poor) may possibly 
by extra toil, frugality, and some chance fortune, reach the 
point whence they in turn may be oppressors of the poor. 

Was it a mere talking against time, wherein we are 
told. "Seek ye nrst the establishment of the kingdom of 
God. and ail these things shall be added unto you? " Or 
rather was it meat to say, "Without scruples of conscience, 
seek first of ail your own temporal welfare and advance- 
ment, forging ahead to a position of industrial, or tf'nancial 
safety, even though as a result of your doing so many of the 



86. 

weak and less fortunate brothers must suffer ; and when by 
superior talents, or some happy hit of fortune given you by 
the Father of all you have reached a position of advantage, 
give an occasional pittance to those injured in the commerc- 
ial battle ? " "That is precisely what the typical millionaire 
churchman is doing, while pretending to believe in non-re- 
resistance, meekness, self-abnegation and the like." 

"We are continually reminded that our laws are not 
made so much for the protection of man, property is of far 
greater importance in the eyes of the present monopoly-rid- 
den government ; and he who calmly declared that, ' Men 
are cheaper than shingles, ' evidently believed he was only 
voicing the sentiments of the powers that be." 

The industries of our country are truly conducted upon 
the survival-of-the-victor or anarchic plan, and as before 
stated, the commercially strong are trampling down the 
weak. 

But under different circumstances — if we had a just and 
honest system : if our system for distributing the products of 
labor was based upon fair and honest principles ; if we had a 
pure democracy or an honest republic ; if this government 
operated wholly for and none against the one paramount 
purpose of our national constitution, i. e., "TO PROMOTE 
the general welfare ; " then every man who is willing to 
labor would be sure of a fair success. 

And so the question as to which man shall survive, the 
fittest or the uniittest, depends very much upon those condi- 
tions under which the men struggle for survival. One con- 
dition of society will enable one kind of a man to succeed. 

And so, a condition of society, a just and correct condi- 
tion of society, will enable every man who is willing to take 
off his coat and go to work, to succeed. 

And, now, my friends, would we have those conditions 



87. 

'which promote' the success and welfare of the comparatively 
dew strong fellows who are on the inside of the trusts and 
•jbreak down the many weaker ones who are on the outside ? 
T&Fould we have those conditions which are producing paup- 
ers, tramps, and anarchists on the one side and a compara- 
tively few millionaire tyrants on the other ? 

Or would we rather have those conditions which shall 
promote the prosperity and happiness of all the people, and 
with the people on the inside of the trusts — deriving equal 
benefits from the trusts ? 

Liet us ever bear in mind that there are trusts and 
trusts, that there are public trusts as well as private trusts. 

There are many private trusts in the hands of the privi- 
leged classes and managed by the privileged few for the 
express benefit of the comparatively few, "nice millionaire 
fellows, you know," at the expense of all the other people. 

There are also the public trusts, in which all the people 
concerned have each an equal interest, and equal privileges. 

The United States mail service is, materially, a public 
trust. It is a trust not for any privileged few but for all. It 
Is a trust that is operated somewhat in keeping with the 
self-evident truth that " All men are created equal." It is 
generally admitted that the people, that is, the government, 
Own this mail trust, (and if they don't own the other trusts, 
why not? ) and the people are on the inside — everyone pre- 
suming to be equally benefited, all having equal privileges. 

But the private trust, the Standard oil trust, for in- 
stance, is different from the public trust, the Uuited States 
piail trust. They are run upon different plans. Tne public 
znail trust being in the hands of the government is for the 
^equal benefit of all the people : while the private oil trust is 
in the hands of a "select class " of fellows, is for their special 
benefit, and at the expense of all the common people. 



88. 

In short, all public trusts, are for the good of the people, 
to promote the common people's welfare and happiness — all 
private trusts are against the people, are "destructive of 
these ends ;" they tend to destray the people's prosperity 
and happiness. 

All, private trusts are arrayed against the 
most important purposes of the government ; that* 
is, they are arrayed against "justice," against 
"domestic tranquility ;" they are arrayed against 
" the general welfare ! " 

The paramount purpose of any and every just govern- 
ment is " TO PROMOTE THE GENERAL WELFARE," VIRTU- 
ALLY THE GENERAL HAPPINESS. And, " IT IS THE RIGHT 
OF THE PEOPLE TO ALTAR OR TO ABOLISH " WHATEVER IN- 
STITUTIONS MAY BECOME DESTRUCTIVE OF THESE ENDS ! " 

What we may reasonably term our public school trusts? 
are controlled by the public ; and all who so will, enjoy 
equal privileges. So with our streets and other highways, 
in which we are all equal stock-holders. 

NO PRIVILEGED CLASSES, NO CLAUDE DUVALS IN POS- 
SESSION OF OUR STREETS AND HIGHWAYS, MAKING THEM- 
SELVES MILLIONAIRES aT OUR EXPENSE ! 

NO STOCK GAMBLING IN OUR MAIL SYSTEM ! 

Did you ever hear of a Rockefeller getting a corner on 
letter stamps ? 

Any "freeze-out" games in the postage-stamp business ? 

No, because this great mail industry, the most admirab' e 
industry in the known world, is in the hands of the govern- 
ment, and also because it is, materially speaking, both a 
government monopoly and a government trust, and we ara 
all to have equal opportunities to share in the privileges it 
affords and moreover, because we are all equal share-holders., 
having equal interests in every stamp that is printed. 



89, 

No doubt, some of the millionaires would like, as in old- 
en time, to possess and control all the wagon roads ; so that 
they could place a toll-gate at every corner and tax the peo- 
ple who wished to pass through. 

No doubt, they would like for the government to quit 
the mail business. 

Then they might sell stamps at one price one dav and at 
two prices some other day, boycott one class and give special 
privileges to another. 

As it is, however, there are no strikes and lock-outs in 
the mail industry. 

The mail service don't close up shop to limit production, 
and establish extortionate prices. 

None of the millionaires get exclusive privileges through 
the mails, like they have over the railroads. 

They don't confiscate our property in this government 
trust. 

Let us American workers, farmers and wage-earners, 
unite as a nation and take the reins of government away 
from the- millionaire usurpars ; then, place the government 
in the possession of the railroads, the great coal mines, the 
oil wells, the telegraphs, and all great factories, etc., etc.; 
CONVERT all private monopolies and trusts, such as are na- 
turally public utilities, into public or government trusts or 
monopolies, to be managed by the government for the equal 
benefit of all the people. Do this, and then there will be no 
more bankrupt little original railway stockholders : no 
more of the present millionaire-methods of confiscating the 
poorer people's wealth; no more hereditary class distinc- 
tions — then there will be a cessation of strikes and freeze- 
outs, of boycotting and blacklisting : a suspension of Kazel- 
ton-massacres, Coeur d'Alene-brutalties and the like ; a sus- 



90. 

pension of a great number of law-sanctioned wrongs which 
are now the order of the day. 

Public possession and control of all public 
utilities ! with the consequent annihilation op 
million airism — and, then, the ceased-to-be million- 
aires will eat their own bread and leave our cake 

ALONE. 

"Said the Monster Trust : "I am born of lust 

And a lustful horde I lead. 
My dam was Desire, and my lawless sire 

Is known in the world as Greed. 
At the hour of my birth there was a sorrow on earth ; 

Toil covered her face and wept, 
And Progress stood back, as I rushed down the track, 

And blindfolded justice slept. 

u Like a mountain of snow I grow and grow, 

As the millionaires push me along — 
They sing at their labor and crush their neighbor 

Down under my weight with a song. 
For the little men must make room for the Trust ; 

They must give us the right of way, 
It is folly to fight with a thing of such might, 

And a thing that has come to stay. 

1 ' As I roll on my path I leave sorrow and wrath, 

And poverty, hunger and cold, 
But the millionaires laugh and a bumper they quaff 

To the Trust, the great monster of gold, 
But they push me too fast, and the many at last, 

The many who curse and rave, 
Shall seize me and bind me, and lo ! they shall find me 

A willing and competent slave. 
"Though I fatten the purses and win the curses 



91. 

Of thousands as I roll by, 
"Yet the time draweth near, when in love, not in fear, 

Shall the laborer look in my eye, 
For the People shall claim me and men shall rename me, 

Though born and begotten of greed, 
I shall yet befriend them, I shall yet defend them — 

Since only God 1 s purpose can speed." 

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox in New York Journal. 



92. 



CHAPTER IX. 

Let it not be in the least supposed that the author of 
this pamphlet presumes to have told anything that is not 
quite generally known. The constant aim has been simply 
to deal with well known facts, very important facts, such as 
the general public have not thought over and weighed with 
that deliberation which should be given to such important 
questions. 

It is a well known fact, that, "The earth yields more 
than enough to make every human being comfortable and 
happy. There is ample material to build every family a 
healthful commodious home : every man, woman and child 
could be clothed in excellant apparel, and the larder stored 
not only with the necessaties but the luxuries of life. 
There is no necessity that one single little child should be 
bare-footed and ragged, nor that women should be forced to 
sell their honor for bread." u Providence never created an 
earth of such boundless resources, simply that a few design- 
ing knaves should appropriate the opportunities to their own 
use as a means of living in luxurious idleness, whilst the 
balance of mankind should toil amidst injustice and frequent 
hunger, in a debasing struggle for bread. 

There is nothing wrong about our mother earth. She is> 



93. 

•able to provide amply for each and every one of her children. 
There is more than enough. There is some to spare. Oh ! 
that men would ponder on these things, long and deeply, 
then be up and doing ! " 

"Production has increased many times more than the 
mouths that are to be fed, and yet many of those mouths are 
hungry, and the backs that are to clothe, are, many of them, 
at the brink of nackedness ; many of the heads that produc- 
tion should shelter, are homeless ; the brains that should be 
educated, are, many of them, dull, superstitious or criminal ; 
and the souls which society should help to feed are often 
brutish." "Surely, it is time that science, moralty and re- 
ligion should speak out. A great change is comming. It is 
•even now at our doors. Ought not men of good will to con- 
sider how we shall receive it, so that its coming may be 
peaceable ? " 

"The greatest criminals of the world, are not the ones 
who break through all laws, and whose selfishness is mani- 
fested in the bloody knife, or the incendiary's fire torch, or 
the bludgeon of the thug. The more scientific, crafty, cun- 
ing, treacherous and cowardly criminals, are the fellows 
who corrupt the fountains of government and create tyran- 
nical laws and conditions by which millions suffer and out 
of which maurauders and robbers naturally and unavoidably 
rise." 

Why should "want and wretchedness, wealth and 
pleasure," be so typical of the two antagonistic classes, be- 
tween whom the contest is gradually becoming more intense, 
more bitter ? 

One cf these classes could do better, if the other were 
not even in existence. 

One class would first have to reform, in order to do at all 
without the others to serve and wait upon them. 



94. 

It is a well known fact, yea, it is a " self-evident truth,' * 
that, if every wage-worker and farmer on the earth would 
happen suddenly to die before night, the millionaires would 
succumb to the inevitable at once, unless they changed 
their ways. But let all the millionaires depart life this 
moment, and the farmers and useful workers would grow 
prosperous and happy. 

The utter annihilation of every millionaire "on the face? 
of God's green earth," would very materially "promote the^ 
general welfare." 

It would prove to be not a "benevolent assimilation" 
but it would prove to be a genuine "expansion" of man's- 
happiness. 

It is a well established fact, that our ancestors believed 
that " God gave kings the right to rule," that, "He special- 
ly endowed them to rule over the masses! " Our ancestors 
were slaves to this arrogant tyranny. The kings told their 
tale, and the deluded credulous people generally believed it^ 
It was a part of the creed, that the kingly tyrants were the 
rightful owners of all the land, and so the people were- 
only permitted to be tenants thereon, upon such terms and 
conditions as suited the pleasure of the tyrants. 

No doubt, the custom of such naturally self-persuaded- 
to-be egotistic kings deluded many of themselves into be- 
lieving that their own arrogance was a righteous virtue 
In fact, history teaches that such was really the case. In all 
probability, such were the delusions of cracy-king George* 
III. I once knew a good old teacher who claimed that an 
habitual hob-goblin-story-teller would rear superstitious 
children who would believe in, not only ghost-fallacies, but 
also many other vices of superstition. Such seem to have 
been the weaknessess of olden kings. The first vicious old 
tyrant to sit upon a throne, taught his children to rever- 



95. 

ence the villianous dogmas of king-craft and to believe in an 
imaginary " Devine-Right-of-Kings-to-rule, " etc., etc.; and 
many of the successors to a throne, seem to have been really 
lost or misguided under this ridiculous delusion. No more 
ridiculous and villianous, however, than the customary ar- 
rogance of modern millionaire-kings of industry. 

What was true concerning the custom that was in vogue 
in the days of our ancestors and the olden kings, is in a 
great measure, true today. 

As the old-time kings falsely claimed and also cajoled 
the confiding people that they ( the kings ) were the right- 
ful owners of all the land ; so the present millionaire-kings- 
of-wealth cajole and entice the common toilers to accept the 
ridiculous theory that these modern kings are the rightful 
owners of the millions of wealth they possess and control. 
But, I repeat, it is a well known fact, that the common toil- 
ers, the farmers and wage-workers, have produced this 
wealth. These millionaires did not produce it and they 
could not now possess it, if they had not cunningly usurped 
it from the common down-trodden toilers. And so sure as 
reason and common-sense is to prevail against the brazen 
arrogance of these fellows ; the very fact that they have no 
good common-sense right to hold and use this wealth must 
YKT become well known, well understood, because it is a 

" SELF-EVIDENT TRUTH ! " 

It is a well known fact, that "Labor is prior to and in- 
dependent of capital: " that "capital is only the fruit of 
labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first ex- 
isted." 

" Labor is the superior of capital and deserves much the 
higher consideration. " — Abraham Lincoln. 

Man's only sensible purpose in laboring, must be for 
prosperity and happiness ; and as the masses are doing the 



work, the fruits of their toil should be for their own welfare 
and comfort. 

Capital, or wealth, is only the product of labor, and cap- 
ital, in the aggregate, should contribute to the general com- 
fort, pleasure, culture, good morals and happiness of the peo- 
ple ; and it should be one of the purposes of government to 
enact laws that will tend toward such results. It is the duty 
of the government to regulate the distribution and control 
of all capital, or wealth, in such manner as will best serve 
to elevate the people, to promote their good morals, their 
comforts, their pleasures, in a word, to promote the greatest 
good moral-happiuess of the greatest number. Wealth or 
capital, should be an agency for good, should be a good mor- 
al-agency : and it should be one of the prime purposes of gov- 
ernment to make it, in every possible way, an agency for the 
upbuilding of general prosperity, happiness and good-moral- 
citizenship. 

An " All-wise-and- just-ruler " must design for wealth to 
be an agency for good — not for bad, to be an agency for ele- 
vating — not degrading — the moral status of humanity. The 
fact, that, "It is human to err: " that "Man is not a per- 
fect being," not '- All- wise-and good ; " that, he is predis- 
posed, not only to do good, but also prone somewhat to do 
evil ; that he is predisposed, not only to be wise and imbued 
with reason and honesty, but also someweat to be unwise 
and given to foolishness, somewhat given to sophistry, deceit 
and fraud ; that he is given, not only to clear-understanding 
as to the questions of right and wrong, but given also to 
misunderstandings, to discords, jealousies and hatreds; 
that he is given not only to mutual and harmonious friendly 
or brotherly intercourse and association, but also to cruel, 
malicious strifes and embroilics : in a word, the fact, that 
man is somewhat cruel and foolish, as well as good and wise, 



97. 

is BEAUTY what necessitates the veby origin and rise of 
government. If man were a perfect being, then there need 
be no judges : no juries ; no courts ; no lawyers ; no armies, 
•or navies. 

It is man^s wickedness and foolishness that make it 
necessary for governments to be instituted among men. 
"And however our eyes may be dazzled witli show, or our 
ears deceived by sound, however prejudice may warp our 
wills, i ntei*est darken our understanding, the voice of 
nature and reason will say," this is a fact. 

It is also a fact, a well known fact, a "self-evident 
truth," that, the greater and broader the good-common- 
gense moral virtue of a oation, the greater the general p 

ty arid happiness thereof. And it. Ls the bound en duty 
*.t to operate in every possible way that will 
tend to elevate fehe moral virtues of all the people. Accord- 
ing to established precedents of all nations, in all ages, a 
government niay sacrifice the lives of thousands and 
thousands of itn people in prosecuting a war In defense 
or support of good moral principles; such being genen 
conceded to be both the right and duty of governments, 
And, if it be the duty of governments to maintain such a 
control over their citizens at the peril of the men's lives: if 
thousands of Uvt* may be laid down In support of moral 
principles, bow mtjcb more k becomes the right and i 
of government to control and regulate ax»l WKAL.TH for the 
ing of the moral virtues of all citizens, how much 
more it becomes tlie bounden duty of government to use 
every Concetvabi*e method for making capital an agency 
to ad van i -e the general good, for making capital an agency 
to promote the spirit of altruism, to promote in every way 

sible a true brotherly spirit. The greater spirit of g 
common-sense-altruism : the broader, the more substanl 



98. 

free and secure, is "the general welfare." And, "In order 
to promote the general welfare," a government must neces- 
sarily encourage an altruistic sentiment ; it must establish 
and maintain such systems as will best serve to encourage 
this altruistic sentiment, this true brotherly feeling — not 
necessarily a religious sentiment, but a true humane or 
righteous sentiment, a genuine "golden rule" spirit- 
not in any sense an established starve religion, or a union of 
church and state, but an altruism based upon the principles* 
of religious freedom, free speech and liberty of the press. 
In whatever respect a government system "fails to secure 
these ends," in such respect' that system is a failure. And 
since our national government maintains one system for the 
distribution and control of capital, which in most respects i» 
• "destructive of these ends;" in those respects the system it* 
a/failure, and, t* It is the right of the people to abolish'-' the 
present private-monopoly-and-trust system. 

As fire may be either a hard master or a good servant, 
according to the system for controlling or regulating h 
with capital. Capital that is invested in private monopolies 
or trusts, such as the United States mail, the public streets 
and other public institutions, wagon roads, free public 
schools and the like, city waterworks, etc., etc., is an agency 
for the general good. All public capital used to carry on 
pubii?. or government monopolies, serves to help develop 
the general prosperity and happiness. Capital, when 
ployed along these lines, as in the mails, the public schools 
etc., upholds and promotes principles of altruism, or of a 
true brotherhood. Capital, when thus directed, tends "to 
promote the general welfare." 

But under our present private-monopoly-and-trusfe 
system, the general tendency of capital is, not to pron 
an altruistic feeling, not to encourage anything like brother- 



99. 

ly sentiments. Far from it ! The general tendency of capi- 
tal when operating under this private-monopoly system, is to 
stir up and promote strifes, jealousies, deceit, hatred, rob- 
bery and even murder ! 

Under this system, wealth gravitates into the private 
monopoly or combine, and by such methods deprives the 
working people of their inalienable right to honest deserv- 
ing wages, dishonestly deprives the workers of the fruits of 
their toil ; appropriates by legal-theft the cream of the 
farmers' produce and also the wages of other toilers. It is 
this kind of wealth, perverted wealth, that is the original 
<cause of strikes, riots, mob-law, etc. It is this kind of capi- 
tal that is demoralizing the American citizenship. It is the 
wealth in private monopoly that breds thieves, robbers and 
murderers. It is the wealth in the government monopoly 
that creates the spirit of altruism. 

It is a well known fact that organized capital in private 
monopolies, is a terrible agency for "propagating almost 
every kind of crime. Either directly or Indirectly, all. the 
working people are victims of legalized robbery which 
wealth, or capital, serves to perpetrate through the private 
monopoly or trust. Hence, I repeat, we must not wonder, 
that the workers, some of them, lead criminal lives. The 
great capitalists are responsible ! More is the wonder, 
that so few of the workers are criminals. That they meekly 
tolerate so many criminal impositions from organized capi- 
tal, and scarcely ever return " tit-for-tat, " speaks plainly of 
the forebearanoe and inherent altrustic disposition of the 
working masses. It is, indeed, not a little remarkable, that 
the dagger of the assassin, is not on the sleuth hunt for 
every monopoly or trust fiend throughout the broad land ! 

When men so conspire to rob the masses at will, usurp 
and corrupt the powers of government, thereby perverting 



100. 

government to criminal ends ; and then, when labor combined 
to guard against such outrages, call out the militia to shoot 
down the laborers, on pretence of their having stepped over 
the bounds of some in onopoly-made-iaw nothing strange? 
it' such fiendish tyrants bt* a^&ssiaated ! Without they were 
so hopelessly steeped in the maddening and stupefying iadu- 
enoes ot their wonted arrogance, they would cease their 
tyrannical depredations, for fear of impending assassination. 
When laws may be made and unmade at the instance of a 
few fiendish tyrants, surely there can be no Iw ki this life* 
to reach inch high-carnival fiends -unless it be t4>e law of 
the thug ! And when the down-trod toilers come to under- 
stand (-as many of them dow do i that tyrant-made laws will 
not punish the tyrant, why strange If the workers lose pati- 
ence and forebaaranae ami, "going from bad to worse," pro*- 
ceed 4» stealthy, Secret means, in the hope of ridding the 
nation of these crafty monopoly-kings^ Let them take 5 
warning tha--, as an unhealthy, disease constitution pro- 
motes bacteria or microbes, soa diseased monopoly-and-trustr 
ridden government must ultimately promote thugs and 
assassins.. And their crimes will rest, upon ail who uphold 
the private monopoly-and-trust-system. 

Armed with the pernicious and powerful influences of 
subsidized newspapers, politicians, etc., and also those wick- 
edly elaborate pulpits as well as colleges, endowed with 
money which they have virtually stolen through the sanction 
of law, these millionaire classes seem determined to precipi- 
tate a reign of carnage ! 

Their blood upon their own hands! 

If the present trend of affairs continues, the time cannot- 
be far distant when the general sentiment of the working 
classes will be, "There is no longer room for hope. We-- 
must fight. I repeat it, sir; we must fight ! " As the young*. 



101. 

Boston ians raid on the British regulars was only a violatiof) 
of the oppressive laws of King^reorge-Tyranny, so the raid 
of the working people In and near C'-oenrd' Aiene was only a 
violation of the cruel and Inhuman laws of modern tyranny, 
01 king-mlllionairism. True, for a time, mad, .stupid King 
George gloated over the Boston massacre, and many a vii- 
lianous millionaire may likewise gloat over the Hazelton 
massacre, the Idaho "bullpen," and other scenes <>i law- 
sanctioned horror. The colonial patriots could not forget the 
ton massacre. Neither can the modern toilers*— NQ& 
SHOULD THEY— forget either Ba/«klto.\ OH ci>Etrft D* 

ALiKJPEl" 

Just as SURE as, u There is a point in poverty when life 
becomes a bu&en and dkath a relief ! " just so $cm: 
the down-trod toiler become more and more wreckless and 
disposed to laj his hands upon the dagger and dog the foofc- 
step? of -law-sanctioned millionaire oppressor and 

robber, and, when not able Do strike the real robber, he may 
attack any of the fairly well-to-do, or middle class : notwith- 
standing, he very well knows that by such conduct he i$ 
probably rushing into the hangman's noose! 

"The millionaire cannot, be alone in this great clanger. 
The mere comfortable liver must UKKWIS15 suffer in case of 
such a hurricane of death. A fashionable suit of clothes 
worn upon the back of a poor clerk his sole possession, per- 
haps may be as good as a death warrant to him. Perhaps 
it will not be a nay of peaceful trial by jury, to which 
each man may appeal and prove himself a friend of the peo- 
ple. It will more probably be in the nature of an insame, 
tierce, unreasoning, savage-like yell for the blood of the op- 
pressor, while many of the oppressors, the real villians, 
will be far, far away in safety and you middle classes will have 
to take the brunt ! You misguided, deluded middle classes 



102. 

who are, many of you, upholding and defending- this private 
monopoly-and-trust system by which wholesale legal-robbery 
is being perpetrated — you, thus, very innocent and uncon- 
scious people are bidding for to place yourselves in the 
greatest danger ! " "Why do you people so thoughtless- 
ly and heedless-like harbor these bigoted dogmas that are 
but the deceptive teachings of modern tyranny ? No sort of 
rigid economy can save up the world for a comparatively 
small privileged class, nor can any man at his death right- 
fully bequeath to his son the life-services of his neighbor's 
son. The world justly belongs to its laboring men ! " 

It is said, "One of the charges against Charles the First 
was that he had created and fostered monopolies. His head 
went to the block ! " For a number of years our law-making 
officials have . likewise fostered and protected monopolies. 
Must history here, repeat itself? Was Mancanly a prophet, 
when, about a half a century ago, he said, "Your republic 
will be pillaged and ravaged in the twentieth century, just 
as the Roman empire was by the barbarians of the fifth 
century, with the difference that the devastators of the Ro- 
man empire, the Huns and the Vandals, came from abroad, 
while your barbarians will be the natives of your own coun- 
try, and the product of your own institutions?" Let us 
hope not. 

Said Daniel Webster, "The freest government cannot 
long endure when the tendency of the law is to create a 
rapid accumulation of property in the hands of a few, and 
render the masses of the people poor and dependent." And 
it is a well subtantiated, well known fact, that such is the 
inevitable tendency of the private monopoly-and-trust 
system. It, therefore, must be abolished and the public or 
"government, system substituted. 

I repeat the well substantiated fact that millionaire 



103. 

monopolizers are maintaining a most skillfully organized 
literary force ft hose purpose is to prepare, print, publish and 
otherwise promulgate from college, political hustings and 
even from the pulpit, specious arguments, ;i full dinner pail'' 
twaddle, etc., against the fast growing. sentiment in favor of 
public possession and control of public utilities. They are 
employing the shrewdest and most cunning talent to abuse 
and pervert language so as to mislead the public, to inocu- 
late the public mind with sophistries and illusions. This is 
the kind of a gang of legal-robbers with which the common 
people have to deal. This is the urgent problem of today, of 
tomorrow. It is the problem necessitating constant vigil- 
ance. But the working people are equal to the task that is 
before them. They can and will co.nquor and subdue this 
horrible enemy with which they have to cope. They will 
ignore the stultified pulpits, colleges, newspapers, etc., and 
organize into a systematic political force aud secure the 
powers of government and with those power's the possession 
and control of trie public utilities, which are for the most 
part, their own rightful, heritage. 

Do the wage-workers hope to secure their rights WITH- 
OUT political co-operation with the farmers ?. Do the farm- 
ers hope for better prices for bread, beef, pork, butter, eggs^ 
etc.. etc., when the wage-workers, the consumers, are re- 
duced to the point of extreme poverty ? Have the farmers' 
"Alliance ? * or ••Grange" organizations repaid the expendi- 
ture of labor and money it cost to maintain them? Let us 
hope " Yes! " " Have our labor unions much more than re- 
paid the expenditure of labor and money it has cost to main- 
tain THEM? M Do we wage-workers and farmers select the 
representatives we elect: do we make our laws : do we gov- 
ern ourselves? Are our political parties controlled by pri- 
vate corporations, monopolies, " that exist as parasites upon 



104. 

the body politic, giving us one of the most scientifically cor- 
rupt and tyrannical despotisms in political history?" Is 
our labor legislation manipulated in a great, measure " by a 
vast lobby system ? " Are the laws of our country largely 
the product of both direct and indirect bribery? Is it an 
exaggeration il to say that the chief work in both state and 
national legislatures for a number of years has been to ob- 
struct, defeat, or cheat, the will of the people ? " When we 
elect/ men to congress or the legislature, are they then our 
public servants or our masters? Must our legislators or 
^ou_rressjuen carry out our wishes, or are they free to do as 
they please'? Should they do as we request of them, or as 
they please? 

When they pass a law that we don't like, what ran we do? 
Can we help ourselves? ruder the present system, are the 
cot^g^ressmen on r masters '. • y ba \ e power to make 

it-xv they please regard le§s_of our wishes? Should your 
hired men be privileged to run your busir as they 

-<~' J If not* wh\ not? Then why do we allow our coii- 
grass to run the government to suit thaur o\vo oonvenienee 

s and cajolery of the lobby, whether 
we Like it that way or not? Do you think a better system 
would be for congress to have iwwei' ON^LY to devise and 
propose a law for us to either sanction or veto as we see fit? 
Do you think the immediate power of the people should be 
greater than '.hut of cor. gross ? Should the majority of the 
voters, have power at the ballot box to veto any bill that 
congress and the president pass and which the by of 

the voters don '1 want? [f not, why not? Do you believe in 
majority-rule? In case the congress or Legislature refuse to 
pass a law that the people • r he people have the 

power to make the ? Do you favor 

direct legislation, = initiative and referndom— t 






105. 

is direct law-making by the voters ? Are you familiar with 
the Swiss system of government, i. e., the initiative and re- 
ferendum ? Have you a desire to learn more of this direct 
legislation, or initiative and referendum system by which the 
voters govern themselves, make laws by direct vote in spite 
of congresses and legislatures, and also veto any noxious 
laws that corrupt congresses or legislatures may try to pass? 
In a word, do you believe in and wish to learn more of the 
really genuine u government-of-the-people-by-the-people- 
and-f or-the-people ' ' system ? 

If so, write to Eltweed Pomeroy, East Orange, New 
Jersey, and ask for circulars. 



106. 

Reader, you are no doubt not unmindful of the somewhat rumored 
and quite reasonably probable scheme to attempt to 4< hoodo and but- 
ton-hole " congress into having the railroads of the United States 
transferred to the government by bonding the country for three or 
four times the real value of the roads. 

There are many innocent, well-meaning, though deluded people 
who are apt to regard such a robbery scheme with favor. They do 
not appreciate the fact that the railroads now belong to them (the 
masses) and not to the millionaire tyrants who possess and operate 
them as a means to oppress, plunder, and rob the common, honest 
toilers, the farmers and wage-earners. Many of these honest toilers 
do not appreciate the fact that they and their fathers have more 
than paid for these roads and that they are therefore the really right- 
ful owners of the same. 

They, being deluded as they are, do not realize the fact that these 
roads and also other great aggragations of wealth have been con- 
fiscated from them by means of legal-robbery and that to assert their 
true manhood, they must demand their rights, demand that Uncle 
Sam recover, or replevy this stolen wealth. 

They do not realize the fact that for a man to stultify himself by 
giving a thief a hundred dollars for the return of a thirty dollar 
watch would be only a parallel to the government buying the rail- 
roads as suggested. They do not realize that to carry out such a pro- 
position would be, not only to stultify themselves, but also a crime 
against future generations. 

However, kind reader, if a perusal of ''Aggressive Common- 
Sense" has served in any measure to convert you to the plain truths 
concerning the situation, and you wish to do your part toward spread- 
ing the light among your own near friends, write for specially reduced 
prices on lots of one dozen or more. 

Address: E. E. HARDING, TRACY, MINNESOTA. 



N 



903 



